This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alder, and this is Clear and Vivid, Conversations about Connecting and Communicating.

I remember one photo was a woman in profile kind of walking on a sidewalk in the background of someone else's photo.

And I didn't think it was me at first until I saw the jacket, I kind of focused on the jacket I was wearing.

And it was from an American vintage store in Tokyo that is a very distinctive jacket that I've never seen anyone else wearing.

And I said, wow, that's me, even though I can't even recognize myself in that photo, or remember where it was walking.

It's kind of incredible what the technology is capable of now in terms of when it can recognize you in a photo.

That's Cashmere Hill.

She's a reporter for The New York Times who's been exploring how technology that has become indispensable is also eroding our privacy.

When she was last on Clear and Vivid a year or so ago, she mentioned the story she had broken in early 2020.

It was about an obscure startup that had created an app that could end privacy as we know it.

She's back to tell us more about that company and the book she's written about it with the disturbing title, Your Face Belongs to Us.

Thank you so much for coming back on the show.

Oh, thanks for having me back, Ellen.

You seem like such a nice person, but you write really scary books.

It's true. It's true. It's not a heartwarming tale.

This one called Your Face Belongs to Us. That title is scary enough. Then you get into the book.

You find out it's not just your face.

It's pretty much everything that's possible to know about you belongs to them.

Who is them? Is it just this one company Clearview or are there a bunch of them now?

So Clearview AI is kind of my entry into the book.

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