Edmonton Police Service (EPS) has kicked off a pilot project of AI-powered body cameras.
From last Wednesday through the end of December, officers will wear the equipment from Arizona-based Axon Enterprise. The cameras will leverage facial recognition software to search for matches in a pre-loaded database. EPS says this database contains the facial data of about 7,000 people who have been flagged as a safety risk due to outstanding warrants for violent crimes, including robbery, aggravated assault and murder.
How it works is the bodycam will scan faces of people within four metres of the officer and send this data to the cloud to compare against the EPC database. If the individual in question isn’t a person of interest, the data will be discard. Potential matches, meanwhile, will be sent for review by a trained professional within 24 hours.
EPS believes this technology will make policing safer and faster. It also says similar facial recognition technology is already being used to identify faces in security footage. It should also be noted that the Government of Alberta mandated in 2023 that all officers in the province wear body cams.
However, these AI-powered bodycams are already drawing scrutiny. For one, some have pointed out that this technology can have biases related to race, gender and age. Diane McLeod, the information and privacy commissioner of Alberta, also told CTV News Edmonton that she’s concerned about both these biases and the EPS maintaining the privacy of Canadians as outlined in the Protection of Privacy Act.
It remains to be seen what may come out of this pilot once it wraps at the end of the month. EPS says it will review the results in the new year before deciding how to move forward.
Image credit: Shutterstock
Via: The Associated Press
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