Skip to main content
ConfirmedAI adjacent

Dutch authority fines Clearview AI 30.5 million euro, the largest AI adjacent fine on record

Dutch DPA took fine action against Clearview AI Inc. over Clearview AI facial recognition search engine, announced 3 September 2024. The amount is 30.5 million euro. Status: confirmed.

The record

Key facts

Record ID
AIT-2024-0003
Status
Confirmed
Action type
Fine
Regime
GDPR
Authority
Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens
Jurisdiction
Netherlands
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
30.5 million euro
Appeal
None recorded. The company stated it does not consider itself subject to the GDPR. No annulment recorded.
Last verified

In full

What happened, and why it matters

The Dutch authority imposed 30.5 million euro on Clearview AI, the largest fine in this tracker, and attached up to 5.1 million euro in further non compliance penalties if the company did not stop. The findings mirror Italy and France: an illegal database of biometric data built by scraping faces from the internet, no legal basis, no information given to the people in it, access rights obstructed, and no representative appointed in the Union. Two things make this record distinct. First, the authority said publicly that it was investigating whether the company's directors could be held personally liable, which is a route European regulators have rarely taken and one that survives into the AI Act era. Second, the authority was candid about the enforcement gap: a company with no European establishment, that ignores three national regulators in a row, is difficult to collect from. That candour is the reason this record belongs in an AI Act tracker. Article 99 gives national authorities fines of up to 35 million euro or 7 percent of worldwide turnover for prohibited practices, and untargeted facial scraping is now one of them. The legal ceiling is not the constraint. Reaching an operator that has no presence in the Union is the constraint, and the Clearview sequence is the evidence.

At a glance

The four things to take away

  • Fine of 30.5 million euro, decision dated 16 May 2024, announced 3 September 2024.
  • Largest AI adjacent fine currently on this tracker.
  • Up to 5.1 million euro in further penalties attached if the violations continue.
  • The authority stated it was examining personal liability of the company's directors.

Orders

What the authority required

  • stop the violations, on pain of non compliance penalties of up to 5.1 million euro
  • appoint a representative in the European Union

The law

Provisions this action rests on

  • GDPR Article 6violated
  • GDPR Article 9violated
  • GDPR Article 12violated
  • GDPR Article 14violated
  • GDPR Article 27violated
  • AI Act Article 5adjacent

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

How it moved

Timeline

  1. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens adopts the fining decision

  2. Decision announced publicly

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. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, Dutch DPA imposes a fine on Clearview because of illegal data collection for facial recognitionPrimary · 3 September 2024
  2. Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, decision textPrimary · 3 September 2024

Next

Related enforcement actions

Cite this record

Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0, with attribution. The record ID AIT-2024-0003 is permanent and is never reused.

In a sentence
According to the GAGE EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker (as of 20 August 2026), dutch authority fines clearview ai 30.5 million euro, the largest ai adjacent fine on record.
APA
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). (2026). Dutch authority fines Clearview AI 30.5 million euro, the largest AI adjacent fine on record. EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Retrieved 20 August 2026, from https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0003-dutch-dpa-clearview-ai-fine
MLA
"Dutch authority fines Clearview AI 30.5 million euro, the largest AI adjacent fine on record." 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-2024-0003-dutch-dpa-clearview-ai-fine.
Chicago
GAGE (Global Academy of Generative-AI Education). "Dutch authority fines Clearview AI 30.5 million euro, the largest AI adjacent fine on record." EU AI Act Enforcement Tracker. Last modified 20 August 2026. https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0003-dutch-dpa-clearview-ai-fine.
Permalink
https://www.gage.academy/tools/eu-ai-act-enforcement-tracker/actions/AIT-2024-0003-dutch-dpa-clearview-ai-fine

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

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