ACLU finds Amazon's facial recognition AI is racially biased

A test of Amazon's facial recognition technology by the ACLU has found it erroneously labelled those with darker skin colours as criminals more often. Bias in AI technology, when used by law enforcement, has raised concerns of infringing on civil rights by automated racial profiling. A 2010 study by researchers at NIST and the University of Texas in Dallas found that algorithms designed and tested in East Asia are better at recognising East Asians, while those designed in Western countries are more accurate at detecting Caucasians. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) ran a test of Amazon's facial recognition technology on members of Congress to see if they match with a database of criminal mugshots. Amazon's Rekognition tool was used to compare pictures of all members of the House and Senate against 25,000 arrest photos, the false matches disproportionately affected members of the Congressional Black Caucus.