Tennessee Highway Patrol are in discussions with Clearview AI, a facial recognition software provider that can identify suspects using a massive database of online photos.
Clearview AI’s software is based on billions of publicly-available photos of people found online, from social media profiles to news websites. It indexes the shapes and unique features of people’s faces found in the photos. Paid users can then upload photos of a face and have the software search for online matches with the hopes of discovering a person’s identity.
The ability to identify people has been especially attractive to law enforcement agencies ranging from federal immigration forces to local county sheriffs, who have quickly adopted the technology.
The potential for invasion of privacy has also caught the attention of Tennessee Attorney General Johnathan Skrmetti.
Last year, Skrmetti signed onto an amicus brief alongside 23 other states and the District of Columbia challenging Clearview AI’s unfettered access to people’s personal photos. They argued a federal judge’s proposed ruling in an Illinois lawsuit against Clearview AI didn’t do enough to protect people’s privacy.
“[We] are therefore deeply concerned that Clearview AI, Inc. has collected billions of images without their consent for use in a searchable facial recognition database,” the brief states. “Worse, the approved settlement sanctions the unlawful conduct that gave rise to this lawsuit and requires class members to release all claims against Clearview nationwide.”
Skrmetti declined an interview for this story.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol, an agency within the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, also declined an interview for this story. However, in a statement, spokesperson Jason Pack said the department is always looking for new technologies.
“This was an initial capability interest to see what this technology is about,” Pack said. “The Department is constantly looking for improvements in lawful technology to assist with lawful investigations to better serve the citizens of Tennessee.”
Tennessee law enforcement and Clearview AI
An intelligence analyst for the Tennessee Highway Patrol sat for a demo with a Clearview AI representative on February 24, according to records obtained by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom.
Emails show several officers for the Tennessee Highway Patrol were invited to the demo. The investigators were told they could send a photo in advance for the software representative to demonstrate how their product works.
“If we want to search an active case we can,” wrote Staci Rossi with the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. “We just have to sign the waiver and send the photos before the demo.”
It’s unclear what photos state employees may have provided Clearview AI for the demonstration, but the terms of the waiver make it clear that for any image they provide, the employees would “consent to the collection and storage of biometric information derived.” The officers would also have to agree to the capture and indefinite storage of any webcam photos taken of themselves during the demo.
Hours after the demonstration, a Clearview AI representative sent Rossi a link to a quote for their services.
In response to a records request for the quote, a spokesperson for the state police did not provide it, but said it totaled “just under” $1 million dollars and “no action” had been taken as of March 25.
Mike Gutierrez is an associate professor of public administration at the University of Tennessee. Previously, he investigated crimes for the Dallas Police Department in Texas. He said there were times facial recognition technology would have been helpful.
“One of the most frustrating things as a law enforcement officer is to have an image of a suspect but nobody knows who the suspect is,” Gutierrez said. “Some of the new technology could be a game changer for identifying individuals. And hopefully what that will lead to is the prevention of further crimes.”
The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority’s police department has used Clearview AI to aid in its investigations since at least 2021, and have run over 1,600 searches in the software since the beginning of 2025, according to records reviewed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom.
A case study published by Clearview AI touted how their software was used by Nashville’s airport police to aid Louisville’s airport investigators in a case involving rental car theft. The Louisville investigators gave Nashville’s officers a photo from an ID a suspect left behind. Nashville’s airport police matched the photo to faces in Clearview’s database. It led to an arrest warrant being issued in Louisville.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story.
The airport police have also been documented conducting searches for other federal, state and local agencies. They’ve used their access to Clearview AI on behalf of the U.S. Secret Service, investigators for the Metro Nashville Police Department and the Franklin Police Department. It also conducted searches for officers who work for Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations – including Rossi.
Gutierrez, the UT associate professor, cautions against its swift adoption without guardrails. However, like with any new technology, he says law enforcement officials should take the time to learn its strengths and weaknesses and adopt policies accordingly.
“In my opinion, it should be on the agencies that are going to implement it to ensure that we’re not overstepping the boundaries of the Constitution,” Gutierrez said. “While I think it’s an amazing tool, we have to be very careful and responsible in its implementation.”
Privacy advocates say Clearview AI puts people at risk
Some say the technology creates new problems by solving old ones.
The American Civil Liberties Union describes Clearview AI as a flawed system that potentially puts everyone who has ever appeared online in a police lineup with every single search law enforcement agencies make in the software.
“It’s searching every face in a database, and if that’s Clearview’s database, it’s searching an incredible proportion of humans on Earth,” said Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology project. “Every American who has a photo of themselves online is at risk here.”
Wessler said he’s seen instances in which facial recognition software’s attempts to match suspects to online photos resulted in wrongful arrests.
“It’s dangerous when it works and it’s dangerous when it doesn’t, by which we mean it often doesn’t do what it’s supposed to,” Wessler said. “It gets it wrong. It makes false matches quite frequently.”
People in 13 states, including Kentucky, can currently opt to have their data deleted or corrected in Clearview AI’s database. But for Tennessee residents, there’s no such option. That’s led many to voice data privacy concerns that have inspired several lawsuits.
In 2020, an investigation from The New York Times found that Clearview AI had been quietly selling its product to private buyers for years, including grocery stores and shopping malls. The ACLU filed suit later that year accusing the company of violating an Illinois law which protected citizens’ biometric data.
Since that case was settled in 2022, Wexler says the company has shifted its focus to the public sector, where it sells its facial recognition tool to police departments and other government agencies across the country.
Now, Clearview AI seems poised to invest in Tennessee. According to its website, the company will have a booth at the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police Mid-Year Vendor Expo in Nashville from April 8-10. Clearview AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch light newsletter here for news from around the region.
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