When John Catsimatidis was finishing dinner in October 2018 at Cipriani in downtown Manhattan, he spotted something amiss: His daughter was also eating dinner there, on a date with an unknown man.
"I wanted to make sure he wasn't a charlatan," Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes chain of supermarkets, told The New York Times.
He asked the waiter to snap a photo of the man without their knowing, then used his smartphone to instantly identify him using a secretive facial-recognition app. He then texted the man's biography to his daughter.
"My date was very surprised," his daughter, Andrea, said.
And indeed he should have been; John Catsimatidis was using Clearview AI's software — supposedly intended for law enforcement — as a way to freak out his daughter.
According to The Times, Catsimatidis was one of several prospective investors who were given access to the app; he said he had access through a friend who cofounded the company. Peter Thiel, David Scalzo, Hal Lambert, and the actor turned investor Ashton Kutcher were also listed in the report as either having access or being suspected of having access to the app.