Sao Paulo AI policing nabs criminals, and a few innocents

Smart Sampa's dragnet has swept up 3,000 fugitives, while nearly 4,000 people have been caught in the act of committing a crime. — AFP

SAO PAULO: In the heart of Sao Paulo, a "prisonometer" keeps a live tally of people jailed due to Latin America's largest AI facial-recognition system, but its successes have been marred by mistaken arrests.

The digital counter stands outside the Smart Sampa monitoring centre, where dozens of police officers watch images streaming in from 40,000 cameras in the Brazilian megalopolis.