ACLU test finds Amazon Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress to mugshots
Published · updated · curated by AI Is Going Just Great
Source: aclu.org ↗
Nearly 40 percent of Rekognition's false matches in our test were of people of color, even though they make up only 20 percent of Congress.
The ACLU built a face database out of 25,000 publicly available arrest photos, ran Amazon's Rekognition against public photos of every sitting member of the House and Senate using Amazon's own default match settings, and got 28 matches to people who had been arrested for a crime. The entire test cost $12.33.
Nearly 40 percent of the false matches were people of color, who make up 20 percent of Congress. Six were members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. John Lewis. Amazon was marketing Rekognition to police at the time, pitching real-time tracking through surveillance cameras and body camera footage, and a sheriff's department in Oregon had already started comparing faces against a mugshot database. The ACLU asked Congress for a moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition. (ACLU)