The AI platform Clarifai has deleted 3 million photos it reportedly obtained from OkCupid to train its facial recognition AI.

The company also removed any AI models developed using that dataset, according to Reuters.

According to the report, Clarifai requested data from OkCupid in 2014, at a time when executives from the dating app had invested in the startup.

OkCupid then shared user-uploaded images along with demographic and location information.

However, this data sharing appears to have conflicted with OkCupid’s own privacy policy at the time, which should have prevented such use.

“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.

Although the incident reportedly occurred 12 years ago, the United States Federal Trade Commission only launched an investigation in 2019.

This followed a New York Times report on Clarifai, which revealed that the company had used images from OkCupid to develop an AI system capable of estimating a person’s age, sex, and race from facial features.

The FTC and OkCupid’s parent company, Match Group, reached a settlement in the case last month.