Oh my god, that's insane! This is the clearest example I've seen of why we need better privacy regulations.
There is nothing stopping a company from just spinning up and doing this to compete with PimEyes, and then you'd have to opt-out of that one too.
Absolutely wild!
Mr. @cstross published an incredible series of books called Halting State about a future in which people have glasses that can life log, recording everything. Same with Daniel Suarez's amazing books Daemon and Freedom(TM). When I first read these books I thought "WOW I must have those glasses" because I would love if my glasses did facial recognition and identified people in crowds that I am connected to, recording, etc.
Way off the creepy scale if I were on the other side of that, but the idea is very, very tantalizing. IMO it's only a matter of time before we have wearable, discreet cameras that do exactly this. No celebrity, etc. will be able to hide in a crowd. It may very well be a nightmare.
Or more generally, "[a camera + Internet connection + PimEyes] can be used to dox anyone in seconds".
From their homepage: "For $29.99 a month PimEyes offers a potentially dangerous superpower from the world of science fiction" - NYT
I'm not sure that's a winning endorsement.