Google App Disables Art-Selfie Biometric Comparison Tool In Illinois And Texas

We have been closely following the legal and legislative developments relating to biometric privacy, and in particular, the flow of litigation under the Illinois biometrics privacy law.   It was interesting to see how the Illinois law (as well as a similar Texas law) influenced Google's  offering of a new facial recognition feature on the Google Arts & Culture app. (It is also interesting to note that the media coverage of the app has made the Illinois and Texas laws subjects of mainstream discourse.)

The Google Arts & Culture app, which was originally released a couple years ago, offers users virtual tours of museums and a searchable database of other art-related content.  What recently made it one of the hottest free apps is a new entertaining tool that compares a selfie to a database of great works of art and presents the results that most closely match the user's face.  [Note: My classical art doppelgänger is "Portrait of a Gentleman in Red" by Rosalba