Clearview AI, a facial recognition start-up that scraped more than 30 billion photos from social media, can’t afford to pay the settlement bill from its class-action lawsuit so is offering Americans a stake in its company instead.
The New York-based company was sued in a federal court in Chicago in litigation that has proven so costly that Clearview AI says it will go bankrupt before making it to trial.
The unusual settlement offers members of the lawsuit a collective 23 percent stake in Clearview AI; an amount that is currently valued at $52 million, per The New York Times.
Members of the class could be literally anyone in the United States who has posted a photo of themselves online so anyone who does submit a claim could be entitled to a cut of the proceeds from a public flotation or an acquisition.
If everyone is an accessory, no one has standing to sue.
Here’s the thing: everyone but you would be an accessory, so you can sue everyone who got stonks. Settle for getting their stonks, and you get 23% of (what was) the company.
(I wish I was only half-kidding, but the US be the US)