AI Safety · United Kingdom · The Guardian Technology
Guilty until proven innocent: shoppers falsely identified by facial recognition system struggle to clear their names
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When Ian Clayton, a retired health and safety professional from Chester, popped into Home Bargains one February lunchtime, he was suddenly approached by a stern-looking member of staff.
Key facts
- The company’s website claims that its system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and that last month it sent 50,288 alerts of “known offenders” to shops including B&M, Home Bargains, Sports Direct, Farm Foods
- Clayton, 67, said that after he was ejected from Home Bargains he tried calling a phone number on a Facewatch poster, and was sent through to a message saying the company did not take calls and he
- Home Bargains eventually issued him an apology and a £100 voucher as a “gesture of goodwill without admission”, on the condition that the details of the incident remain confidential
- Jennie Sanders, 48, from Birmingham, was browsing in B&M on a Saturday afternoon last year when a security guard told her she had been flagged up on the Facewatch system and he had to escort
Summary
“Excuse me, can you please put everything down and leave the shop now? ” she said. “You’ve come up on our system called Facewatch as a shoplifter,” came the reply. He is one of several people who have spoken to the Guardian after being falsely identified as a thief by shops using Facewatch, a live facial recognition system being rolled out across the UK to clamp down on retail crime. The company’s website claims that its system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and that last month it sent 50,288 alerts of “known offenders” to shops including B&M, Home Bargains, Sports Direct, Farm Foods and Spar, which all now use the software.