Opinion: Facial recognition technology victimises people of colour. It must be regulated

A live demonstration uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition in dense crowd spatial-temporal technology at the Horizon Robotics exhibit at the Las Vegas Convention Center during CES 2019 in Las Vegas. — Getty Images/TNS

Last year, a House Judiciary subcommittee heard a harrowing, but increasingly common, story of injustice. Robert Williams, a Black man, was arrested in 2020 on suspicion of stealing watches from a store in Detroit. But even though he hadn’t been in that store in several years, police took him away in a squad car in front of his two young daughters. He was held in custody for more than 30 hours for a crime he didn’t commit.

Law enforcement identifying the wrong suspect isn’t new. What is new is how police make these kinds of mistakes. In Williams’ case, the Detroit Police Department used Michigan State Police’s facial recognition program to identify a suspect from a grainy surveillance image. The technology used Michigan’s database of driver’s license photos to land on Williams as a possible match — a high-tech mistake with grave human consequences. It is essential that a federal law is created to help prevent these kinds of mistakes by law enforcement.