Facial recognition leads to wrongful arrest of Black man in Detroit

A Black man in Detroit was wrongfully arrested and detained by police who mis-identified him with a false facial recognition hit. The case of Robert Williams, an innocent person who was held in police custody for a day, is the first publicly reported case of artificial intelligence resulting in a false arrest in the United States.

The ACLU has filed a complaint against the Detroit Police Department.

NPR's Bobby Allyn interviews the man whos now calling for a ban on the technology in today's Morning Edition.

The Detroit Police were using technology provided by Rank One. The company said in a blog post last year that fears people could be mis-identified were misconceptions, and linked to U.S. government research on potential high accuracy of AI systems.

From a report by Reuters:

Robert Williams spent over a day in custody in January after face recognition software matched his drivers license photo to surveillance video of someone shoplifting, the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan (ACLU) said in the complaint. In a video shared by ACLU, Williams says officers released him after acknowledging the computer must have been wrong.

Government documents seen by Reuters show the match to Williams came from Michigan state polices digital image analysis section, which has been using a face matching service from Rank One Computing. Detroit and state authorities and Rank One could not be immediately reached for comment.

The ACLU complaint requests Detroit police stop using facial recognition as the facts of Mr. Williams case prove both that the technology is flawed and that investigators are not competent in making use of such technology.