From New York City to the streets of Tokyo, creepy AI-facial recognition security systems are quickly becoming a common sight across the world. Unfortunately for many, the tech is nowhere near ready for the responsibility of live use as the troubling rise of false-positive matches makes clear.
In the United Kingdom, AI surveillance systems in retail stores have led to a surge in customers being wrongly accused of shoplifting. TechRadar highlighted a number of recent cases throughout the country, where shoppers say false accusations have left them shaken, with a feeling that their privacy had been horribly violated.
As one woman identified as Mary told the publication, her husband has been socially “isolated” after a quick jaunt into a Home Bargains store for vitamins went awry. When the stores’ system flagged the anonymous man as a shoplifter, the couple was forced to leave by management, seemingly without any chance to refute the accusation.
“I was scared to go into a shop,” the man told TechRadar.
Another man was said to be “shaking from head to toe” following his wife’s removal from a Budgens chain store for the crime of stealing “loads of meat” days before — an accusation complicated by the fact that they hadn’t set foot in the store for months.
In these and other cases, the publication reports a dizzying labyrinth of corporate bureaucracy and vague insinuations that leave innocent people unable to access their local businesses, and with little recourse to clear their name.
In the UK, individuals can file Subject Access Requests, or SARs, which are like US-Freedom of Information Act requests but for private companies. Though the avenue technically exists for those wrongly accused of shoplifting, it’s a massive undertaking just for the hope of clearing your name — and requires handing over even more private information to private companies.
As head of advocacy at civil liberty group Big Brother Watch Jack Coulson told TechRadar, it’s “the stuff of Kafkaesque nightmares to be trapped in a maze of bureaucracy and forced to hand over even more personal data just to be told the accusation.”
More on facial recognition: Innocent Man Freed After Spending Over 50 Days in Jail Due to Horribly Inaccurate AI Facial Recognition Tech