Ukrainian official says facial recognition being used to ID dead Russians

Ukraine is utilizing facial recognition software to identify the bodies of Russian soldiers who have been killed amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who also heads the country’s ministry of digital transformation, told Reuters that Kyiv is using software from Clearview AI, a recognition company headquartered in New York, to identify fallen Russian soldiers. The technology matches uploaded photos of the dead soldiers with images from the web.

Fedorov said Ukraine has worked to match photos of deceased Russian soldiers with images from social media accounts. After the soldiers are identified, authorities have contacted family members to make plans for collecting the body.

The technology, however, is not being utilized to identify Ukrainian soldiers, according to Fedorov. He did not elaborate why.

“As a courtesy to the mothers of those soldiers, we are disseminating this information over social media to at least let families know that they, they’ve lost their sons and to then enable them to come to collect their bodies,” Fedorov told Reuters.

News of Ukraine utilizing facial recognition technology comes as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is entering its second month. The conflict began on Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military operation in Ukraine.

Around 15,000 Russian soldiers have died since the invasion of Ukraine began, Reuters reported, citing Ukraine’s military. Moscow, however, has said the number of casualties is significantly lower.

Clearview AI said its technology is utilizing more than 2 billion images from VKontakte, a Russian social media network. Clearview AI is not charging Ukraine for using the software.

Fedorov would not tell Reuters how many bodies have been recognized through the Clearview AI technology, but said a “high” percentage of identified individuals have been claimed by families thus far. The news wire, however, noted that it was unable to verify the claim.

Some entities, especially civil rights groups, are opposed to using facial recognition technology to identify fallen soldiers out of concern of misidentification, according to Reuters.

Clearview AI is currently entrenched in a lawsuit in U.S. federal court in Chicago that is looking into if the company’s method of assembling photos from the internet is in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, according to Reuters. The case was filed by consumers.

Clearview AI has argued that its method is legal, contending that face matches can only be a beginning matter for investigations.