In a controversial move, UK police is being encouraged to double its use of retrospective facial recognition to track down known offenders.
Specifically, in a letter to force chiefs, policing minister Chris Philp said that using the AI-enabled technology would allow for over 200,000 searches of images against the Police National Database by May 2024.
Philp also encouraged the increase of live facial recognition, which captures live footage of crowds and compares it with a list of wanted suspects to alert the police. The technology is already being heavily used by UK law enforcement — with King Charles III’s coronation in May representing its largest-ever public space deployment in British history.
“AI technology is a powerful tool for good, with huge opportunities to advance policing and cut crime,” the minister said in a statement. Facial recognition, he noted, has already proven its value in identifying criminals and missing people, while freeing up police time and resources.
But while a recent report by the National Physics Laboratory highlighted the high accuracy of these systems, growing concerns over the technology range from the lack of clear regulation and risks of bias to the emergence of an Orwellian state of surveillance.
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Source : The Next Web