Apple punishes facial recognition company Clearview AI for ignoring developer rules

Clearview AI's week keeps getting worse.

Apple has suspended the controversial facial recognition company's iOS developer account following a report from Buzzfeed News that Clearview AI was in violation of Apple’s Enterprise Developer Program rules.

As a result, Apple has disabled Clearview AI's iOS app, giving the company 14 days to respond to Apple's claim.

Specifically, Apple's rules state that companies “may not use, distribute or otherwise make Your Internal Use Applications available to any third parties in any way.”

Buzzfeed's report found that Clearview AI was doing exactly that by "encouraging" its clients to download the iOS app in violation of that rule.

This new follows the announcement from earlier in the week that Clearview AI's client list was accessed via a data breach. While the company insists there was “no compromise of Clearview’s systems or network," the world is getting a look at who, exactly, is using the company's facial recognition app.

Though Clearview AI has claimed that its program is mostly for law enforcement, a look at that client list revealed a number of other businesses had at least tried out the product, including retailers like Macy's, Walmart, and Kohl's. Even the NBA appears on the list.

In the meantime, Clearview AI's shady data-gathering approach continues to generate plenty of debate. The company has built its database by scraping billions of photos from the internet, including from social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

While both of those companies, as well as others that Clearview AI has scraped photos from, issued cease-and-desist requests, the company's CEO, Hoan Ton-That, has taken the unique position that he has a First Amendment right to scrape your publicly-shared photos for whatever purpose.

Now that the list of powerful companies Clearview AI has pissed off includes Apple, its days might just finally be numbered.