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      Innocent pregnant woman jailed amid faulty facial recognition trend

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 7 August, 2023 - 18:39

    Innocent pregnant woman jailed amid faulty facial recognition trend

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Aurich Lawson)

    Use of facial recognition software led Detroit police to falsely arrest 32-year-old Porcha Woodruff for robbery and carjacking, reports The New York Times. Eight months pregnant, she was detained for 11 hours, questioned, and had her iPhone seized for evidence before being released. It's the latest in a string of false arrests due to use of facial-recognition technology, which many critics say is not reliable.

    The mistake seems particularly notable because the surveillance footage used to falsely identify Woodruff did not show a pregnant woman, and Woodruff was very visibly pregnant at the time of her arrest.

    The incident began with an automated facial recognition search by the Detroit Police Department. A man who was robbed reported the crime, and police used DataWorks Plus to run surveillance video footage against a database of criminal mug shots. Woodruff's 2015 mug shot from a previous unrelated arrest was identified as a match. After that, the victim wrongly confirmed her identification from a photo lineup, leading to her arrest.

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      Report: OpenAI holding back GPT-4 image features on fears of privacy issues

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 18 July, 2023 - 21:35

    A woman being facially recognized by AI.

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    OpenAI has been testing its multimodal version of GPT-4 with image-recognition support prior to a planned wide release. However, public access is being curtailed due to concerns about its ability to potentially recognize specific individuals, according to a New York Times report on Tuesday.

    When OpenAI announced GPT-4 earlier this year, the company highlighted the AI model's multimodal capabilities. This meant that the model could not only process and generate text but also analyze and interpret images, opening up a new dimension of interaction with the AI model.

    Following the announcement, OpenAI took its image-processing abilities a step further in collaboration with a startup called Be My Eyes , which is developing an app to describe images to blind users, helping them interpret their surroundings and interact with the world more independently.

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      Iran to use facial recognition to identify women without hijabs

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 11 January, 2023 - 14:30

    Illustration of woman wearing hijab with gunsights on her

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    Last month, a young woman went to work at Sarzamineh Shadi, or Land of Happiness, an indoor amusement park east of Iran’s capital, Tehran. After a photo of her without a hijab circulated on social media, the amusement park was closed, according to multiple accounts in Iranian media. Prosecutors in Tehran have reportedly opened an investigation.

    Shuttering a business to force compliance with Iran’s strict laws for women’s dress is a familiar tactic to Shaparak Shajarizadeh. She stopped wearing a hijab in 2017 because she views it as a symbol of government suppression, and recalls restaurant owners, fearful of authorities, pressuring her to cover her head.

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      Black man wrongfully jailed for a week after face recognition error, report says

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 4 January, 2023 - 22:46 · 1 minute

    Photo illustration shows lines on a Black man's face to represent a facial recognition system.

    Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

    Police in Louisiana reportedly relied on an incorrect facial recognition match to secure warrants to arrest a Black man for thefts he did not commit.

    Randal Reid, 28, was in jail for almost a week after the false match led to his arrest, according to a report published Monday on NOLA.com , the website of the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate newspaper. Reid told the newspaper that he had never even been to Louisiana:

    Local police pulled over Reid on Nov. 25 as he drove on Interstate 20 in DeKalb County, Georgia, headed to a late Thanksgiving celebration with his mother, he said.

    "They told me I had a warrant out of Jefferson Parish. I said, 'What is Jefferson Parish?,'" Reid said. "I have never been to Louisiana a day in my life. Then they told me it was for theft. So not only have I not been to Louisiana, I also don't steal."

    Reid was booked into the DeKalb County jail as a fugitive but was let go on Dec. 1, a jail official said.

    Reid's lawyer, Tommy Calogero, said that Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office detectives "tacitly" admitted the error and rescinded the warrant, the report said. "I think they realized they went out on a limb making an arrest based on a face," Calogero said.

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      MSG defends using facial recognition to kick lawyer out of Rockettes show

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 20 December, 2022 - 20:13

    MSG defends using facial recognition to kick lawyer out of Rockettes show

    Enlarge (credit: Steve Zak Photography / Contributor | Getty Images North America )

    When Kelly Conlon joined her daughter’s Girl Scout troop for a fun outing to see the Rockettes perform their Christmas Spectacular show at Radio City Music Hall in New York, she had no idea she’d end up booted from the show the moment she stepped into the building.

    Security stopped Conlon, NBC New York reported , because of her work as a New Jersey lawyer. It seems that Madison Square Garden Entertainment has begun using facial recognition technology to identify any visitor to any of its venues—including Radio City Music Hall—who is involved with any law firm that previously filed litigation against MSG Entertainment.

    Conlon has never practiced law in New York nor personally been involved in litigation against MSG Entertainment. Instead, she is guilty by association, as an associate for Davis, Saperstein and Solomon, which has spent years tangled up in litigation against a restaurant that NBC reported is “now under the umbrella of MSG Entertainment.”

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