Clearview AI Tests InquiryIQ Web Research Prototype for Police

Clearview AI has built and tested InquiryIQ, an unreleased artificial intelligence prototype designed to expand a face-search lead into a wider online profile for law enforcement investigators.

Code and interface files reviewed by WIRED describe a system that can open webpages, analyze images and run web and image searches after an investigator supplies information from a Clearview face search. The tool is designed to assemble possible aliases, employers, addresses, phone numbers, social-media accounts, arrest histories and associates.

The interface calls the resulting network a Candidate Graph. Investigators can add details such as age, gender, race, hair color and eye color to guide a search, while face recognition can be applied to additional photographs encountered during the process.

Clearview says InquiryIQ is an experimental analyst assistant that has never been pitched or shipped to customers. Chief Executive Amos Kyler said no law-enforcement user has used it and that the company has no current plan to release the prototype in its present form.

The interface included model options from xAI and Amazon Bedrock during testing. Clearview says those choices allowed its engineers to compare models rather than giving police control over the underlying system, and the company has not determined that any tested model is suitable for InquiryIQ.

Any findings generated by the prototype are presented for an officer to accept or reject. The interface warns that automatically generated demographic, social-media and arrest information may be inaccurate, and requires the investigator to attest that accepted findings were independently verified.

Clearview’s existing service is used to produce investigative leads by matching a submitted face against images collected from the public internet. The company says its database now contains more than 70 billion images and is used by more than 2,000 US law-enforcement agencies.

A recent court filing detailed Clearview searches in a Minnesota protest investigation, including results that defense lawyers alleged included unrelated people. Local agencies have also continued expanding access, with Gadsden Police in Alabama recently obtaining direct use of Clearview’s face-search platform.

InquiryIQ would automate online research that currently follows a possible face match, while leaving investigators responsible for deciding whether a generated connection is valid. The prototype’s interface preserves the distinction by treating output as a lead that requires human review before it becomes part of a subject profile.

Sources: WIRED

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By the ID Tech Editorial Team