Imagine the plight of a man who was wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, just because an AI facial recognition software suggested so.
That happened to Jalil Richardson of North Carolina, who was innocent but spent over 50 days in jail. According to a report by Action News Jax, Richardson was accused of stealing a vehicle in Jacksonville, Florida.
Police used security camera footage from a private business in their AI facial recognition system, which suggested that Richardson’s face matched the suspect with 85% accuracy.
The AI result was combined with two eyewitness testimonies, leading the police to establish probable cause against Richardson, although he was at his job hundreds of miles away when the crime took place.
Richardson Spent More Than 50 Days in Jail
Having spent two months in jail, Richardson and his lawyers were finally able to prove in court that he was somewhere else when the crime took place. This forced prosecutors to drop the charges against him.
Revealing his account, Richardson said the police failed to investigate properly. He said:
“There was no proper investigation done to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida. And I sat in there for over 50 days in the most worst jail ever.”
Unfortunately for Richardson, the jail time meant he lost his job, his home, and custody of both his kids. He said:
“I’m not sure how I’m gonna bounce back from this one, you know. It’s a lot. I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
Wrongful Arrests Due to AI Are Increasing
According to the privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Adam Schwartz, Richardson’s case is the 14th wrongful arrest based on AI facial recognition software. Schwartz said:
“The technology is simply too dangerous for law enforcement to be using at all. More than a dozen innocent people have been arrested by police because of errors with face recognition. These errors, majority, are people of color. The largest group of them is Black people.”
However, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says that the technology does not unfairly target people with certain skin tones. But there is growing evidence suggesting that this claim may not be true.
Florida Man’s Wrongful Arrest Due to AI Raises Concerns
In another case, Richard Dillon was arrested in 2023 for allegedly trying to lure a child away from a McDonald’s in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. However, in reality, Dillon was more than 300 miles away when the crime took place.
According to a report by CBS News, the wrongful arrest took place because the police allegedly relied on facial recognition software, which concluded that the suspect’s image matched Dillon’s face by 93%.
Dillon is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against the Jacksonville Beach Police Department and others for the alleged misuse of AI facial recognition technology. The complaint states:
“Police let an error-prone artificial intelligence system stand in for an investigation.”
When Dillon saw the suspect’s image, he was shocked at how wrong AI was, given the differences in the scars. He said:
“The scars are nowhere near alike. It absolutely blew my mind.”
While charges were dropped two months later, Dillon continues to face social challenges. He said:
“Now every time I go somewhere and I want to interact with a kid, I think to myself, don’t do it. There’s cameras. It’s ruined my life as far as being able to interact with children. I feel like people are watching me. I feel like people are saying, hey, there’s that guy that was on the news, stay away from him.” [sic]
Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, revealed that AI facial recognition software is not always reliable in producing accurate matches.
The software is meant to be used as a tool by law enforcement agencies that can help guide their investigations. Dillon hopes the lawsuit will prevent others from going through the hardships he endured through no fault of his own. He said:
“I’m hoping that the outcome of this is to prevent other people from going through the trauma that I went through.”