Skip to main content
ConfirmedAI adjacent

CNIL charges Clearview AI a further 5.2 million euro for ignoring the erasure order

CNIL took corrective order action against Clearview AI Inc. over Clearview AI facial recognition search engine, announced 10 May 2023. The amount is 5.2 million euro. Status: confirmed.

The record

Key facts

Record ID
AIT-2023-0002
Status
Confirmed
Action type
Corrective order
Regime
GDPR
Authority
Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés
Jurisdiction
France
Target
Clearview AI Inc., headquartered in United States
Sector
Biometric identification
AI system
Clearview AI facial recognition search engine
Date announced
Date of decision
Amount
5.2 million euro
Appeal
None recorded. No annulment recorded.
Last verified

In full

What happened, and why it matters

Seven months after the 20 million euro sanction, the French authority liquidated the penalty payments that had been running since the injunction went unheeded, and charged Clearview AI a further 5.2 million euro. The company had not proved that it had stopped collecting data on people in France, had not shown that it had erased what it held, and had not made access and erasure rights usable. Each day past the two month deadline had carried 100,000 euro, and the CNIL closed the meter and issued the bill. Nothing in this decision reopens the merits. It is purely about non compliance with a corrective order, which is what makes it useful as a record. Enforcement trackers that only count headline sanctions understate the real exposure, because a European authority can keep charging for as long as an order is ignored, and the second bill here was a quarter of the first. Under the AI Act the same architecture exists: Article 99 penalties sit alongside the market surveillance powers to restrict, withdraw and recall a system, and the AI Office can impose periodic penalty payments of its own. An operator that treats a corrective order as optional will meet the same escalation under the new regime that Clearview met under the old one.

At a glance

The four things to take away

  • Additional 5.2 million euro, decision of 13 April 2023, announced 10 May 2023.
  • This is an accrued penalty payment, not a second sanction on the merits.
  • It follows the 100,000 euro per day mechanism attached in October 2022.
  • Total French exposure across both decisions: 25.2 million euro.

Orders

What the authority required

  • liquidate the accrued daily penalty payments attached to the October 2022 injunction

The law

Provisions this action rests on

Read the official text of Article 5 in the EU AI Act Explorer, consolidated with the Digital Omnibus applied.

How it moved

Timeline

  1. Two month compliance deadline from the October 2022 injunction expires

  2. CNIL liquidates the accrued penalty payments

  3. Decision announced

Verification

Sources

Primary sources are the authority's own decision or press release, the Official Journal, or a court judgment. A record with no source is not published.

  1. CNIL, Facial recognition: the CNIL imposes an overdue penalty payment of 5.2 million euros against Clearview AIPrimary · 10 May 2023

Next

Related enforcement actions

Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID AIT-2023-0002 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker (as of 20 August 2026), cnil charges clearview ai a further 5.2 million euro for ignoring the erasure order.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). CNIL charges Clearview AI a further 5.2 million euro for ignoring the erasure order. EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Retrieved 20 August 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0002-cnil-clearview-ai-overdue-penalty
MLA
"CNIL charges Clearview AI a further 5.2 million euro for ignoring the erasure order." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker, GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education), 20 August 2026, https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0002-cnil-clearview-ai-overdue-penalty.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "CNIL charges Clearview AI a further 5.2 million euro for ignoring the erasure order." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Last modified 20 August 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0002-cnil-clearview-ai-overdue-penalty.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2023-0002-cnil-clearview-ai-overdue-penalty

Back to the full enforcement tracker, or see every action against biometric identification and every action in France.

Last updated . Every record re verified . The tracker is checked every Monday, and the same day for any action under the AI Act.

Powered by GAGE, free EU AI Act tools from the Global Academy of Generative-AI Education