The American start-up Clearview has made its controversial facial recognition programs available to the government of Ukraine.

This is intended to identify dead Russian soldiers and inform their affected families.

Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told the Reuters news agency.

Reuters had previously reported on the use of the special software.

Moscow said it had no information on this.

Stephen Finsterbusch

Editor in Business.

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In the interview, Fedorov explained that the Clearview program was first used by the Ukrainian government in March.

This is how you take pictures of the dead and let the images run through various social networks, platforms and media.

In this way it is possible to find out who the dead are and where they came from.

In this way, the bereaved can be informed about the fate of their relatives who died in the war on specially set up social media channels.

Clearview had apparently offered Ukraine its special software free of charge.

The company said it had just launched a new version of its program.

Customers now have access to around 20 billion publicly available portraits.

These images are captured and analyzed using an artificial intelligence algorithm.

Such programs are very controversial in many parts of the world, banned in many places or only permitted within very narrow legal frameworks.

In America, Clearview is also currently facing a lawsuit from consumers alleging violation of the Illinois Information Privacy Act.

The company declares that it will comply with all legal requirements.

According to Clearview, it already has thousands of customers, including 3,100 government agencies in the United States alone.

In Ukraine, the algorithms are used in an area that has not yet been tested.

Apparently, many Russian soldiers do not wear identification tags that would reveal their identity in the event of death.

Also, many soldiers' families do not know that their relatives are involved in the attack on Ukraine.

In addition, there were several reports that the Russians would simply abandon their soldiers killed in combat.

Fedorov did not say how many dead have been identified so far.

So far, Ukrainian military officials are assuming around 14,200 – about as many as in the Afghan war between 1979 and 1989.