Rights group files federal complaint against AI-hiring firm HireVue

A prominent rights group is urging the Federal Trade Commission to take on the recruiting-technology company HireVue, arguing that the firm has turned to unfair and deceptive trade practices in its use of face-scanning technology to assess job candidates’ “employability.”

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, known as EPIC, on Wednesday filed an official complaint calling on the FTC to investigate HireVue’s business practices, saying the company’s use of unproven artificial intelligence systems that scan people’s faces and voices constituted a wide-scale threat to American workers.

HireVue’s “AI-driven assessments,” which more than 100 employers have used on a million-plus job candidates, use video interviews to analyze hundreds of thousands of data points related to a person’s speaking voice, word selection and facial movements. The system then creates a computer-generated estimate of the candidates’ skills and behaviors, including their “willingness to learn” and “personal stability.”