OkCupid Deletes Photos After FTC Settlement with Clarifai Over 2014 Data Sharing Request

The photo deletion comes after an FTC settlement with Clarifai. The company had asked OkCupid — whose executives had invested in Clarifai — to share data in 2014, according to court documents.

Clarifai deleted approximately three million user photos that it received from OkCupid in 2014 to train its facial recognition AI, according to Reuters. The company also deleted any models that were trained using that data.

Per the FTC’s investigation, Clarifai asked OkCupid — whose executives had invested in the company — to share data in 2014. The dating app then provided these user-uploaded photos, reports say, along with other demographic and location data.

Per OkCupid’s own privacy policies, this behavior should have been prohibited. “We’re collecting data now and just realized that OKCupid must have a HUGE amount of awesome data for this,” Clarifai founder and CEO Matthew Zeiler wrote in an email to OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn, according to court documents reviewed by Reuters.

Though this incident appears to have taken place twelve years ago, the FTC did not open an investigation until 2019, when a New York Times article about Clarifai mentioned that the company had used images from OkCupid to build an AI tool that could estimate someone’s age, sex, and race based on their face.

The FTC and OkCupid, which is owned by Match Group, settled the lawsuit last month. At the time, OkCupid and Match Group did not admit to the allegations that it deceived users by violating its own privacy policies, but Clarifai’s confirmation that it has deleted the data implies that the company did indeed get access to those photos.

The FTC also alleged that since 2014, Match Group and OkCupid deliberately concealed this behavior and attempted to obstruct its investigation.

While the FTC is not able to fine companies for this type of first-time offense, the agency declared that OkCupid and Match are “permanently prohibited from misrepresenting or assisting others in misrepresenting” the nature of their data collection and sharing.

Clarifai certified its deletion to the FTC on 7 April 2026, according to a document seen by Reuters, and told the office of US Representative Lori Trahan on 16 April that it had deleted any models trained on the data and had not shared it with third parties.

The underlying incident began over a decade ago. OkCupid’s founders were investors in Clarifai, and Clarifai’s founder Matthew Zeiler contacted OkCupid co-founder Maxwell Krohn in 2014 to request access to its data.

OkCupid handed over nearly three million user photos, along with location and demographic data, without any formal agreement, without placing restrictions on how the data could be used, and without notifying users or allowing them to opt out.

OkCupid’s privacy policy at the time explicitly stated it would not share personal data with parties outside a defined set of business relationships. Clarifai was none of those things.

The FTC opened its investigation after a New York Times article in 2019, but the case took years to settle. The proposed consent order, announced on 30 March 2026, prohibits OkCupid and its parent Match Group, which also operates Tinder, from misrepresenting their data practices for 20 years.