When AI Facial Recognition Identifies You for a Crime You Didn’t Commit

Lawsuits against police using facial recognition to arrest people keep cropping up in the United States. The latest one, filed in Detroit in August 2023, is the sixth case in the last three years.

Needless to say, suffering the indignity of being unjustly arrested because artificial intelligence (AI) has made a mistake is a terrifying event that can have devastating consequences on a person. Even more so when the wrongful charges are not discovered in time, and the victim faces jail.

On the other hand, supporters of this technology claim it has helped law enforcement become much more efficient. These mishaps can be solved by overcoming some inherent software flaws or by ensuring high-resolution footage images are used more regularly.

However, how ethical is it to keep “testing” AI facial recognition technology (FRT) to arrest people who may be innocent in the meantime?