Clearview AI built its database by scraping billions of images from public websites and social media without the platforms' or the individuals' consent, then sells search access to that database to police and other customers. A search returns candidate matches for a human investigator to review; the company describes results as investigative leads requiring verification, not confirmed identifications, and multiple documented wrongful arrests have followed cases where that verification step was apparently skipped.

Clearview's web-scraping approach is what distinguishes it, legally, from tools like Facewatch or standard police mugshot databases, which draw on images the operator already held for a defined purpose. Privacy regulators in Canada, the UK and Australia (the latter two in a joint investigation) each separately found the company's data collection breached their respective privacy laws and ordered it to stop collecting their citizens' images; the company has continued operating in the US and continued serving other government customers, including reported contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and a US Army special operations command.