Clarifai deleted 3 million photos that OkCupid provided to train its facial recognition AI, the report said.

According to Reuters, AI platform Clarifai removed 3 million photos taken from OkCupid to train its facial recognition AI. The company also deleted all models trained using that data.

The FTC’s investigation found that Clarifai asked OkCupid, whose executives had invested in the company, to share data in 2014. According to the report, the dating app provided user-uploaded photos along with other demographic and location data. According to OkCupid’s privacy policy, this behavior should be prohibited.

“We are collecting data now, and we realized that OKCupid would have to have a ton of cool data to do it,” Clarifai founder and CEO Matthew Zeiler wrote in an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.

Although the incident appears to have occurred 12 years ago, the FTC did not begin its investigation until 2019. A New York Times article about Clarifai at the time noted that the company used images from OkCupid to build an AI tool that could estimate a person’s age, gender, and race based on their face.

The FTC and OkCupid, owned by Match Group, settled the lawsuit last month. At the time, OkCupid and Match Group did not acknowledge claims that they defrauded users in violation of their own privacy policies, but Clarifai’s confirmation that the data was deleted means the companies did indeed access those photos. The FTC also alleged that, starting in 2014, Match Group and OkCupid intentionally attempted to cover up this conduct and impede investigations.

OkCupid and Clarifai did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.

While the FTC can’t fine the companies for a first-time violation of this type, the agency declared that OkCupid and Match are “permanently prohibited from misrepresenting or assisting others to misrepresent” the nature of their data collection and sharing. OkCupid and Match are therefore prohibited from engaging in this practice, which is already disallowed by the FTC.