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Enforcement · Class-action lawsuit

Court approves $51.75M settlement with Clearview AI over facial recognition scraping

Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) Illinois

A federal court in Illinois granted final approval to a $51.75 million settlement resolving claims that Clearview AI violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by scraping over 60 billion images from the internet to build its facial recognition database without consent. Rather than cash, class members received a 23% equity stake in the company, plus a mandatory opt-out system and deletion of biometric data for Illinois residents.

Why it matters The facial-recognition company that scraped billions of photos without asking didn't pay cash. It gave away nearly a quarter of itself instead.
Read the primary source
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois
Open source

Published by Editorial on Sep 23, 2026. Not independently re-checked against the primary source — read it via the link above.

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Primary source

Summaries are DataGrail’s wording, not statutory text; amounts and outcomes come from the linked primary source.

This summary is DataGrail's own plain-language account, written for privacy practitioners. It is not legal advice. For the authoritative text, follow the primary-source link above.