AI system can blow the whistle if people can't keep their distance

Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence monitoring system to keep track of whether people are social distancing in public spaces, and alerting local authorities if they are not. Griffith University researchers developed the system to monitor the movement of crowds of people in real-time and then applied it to look for instances of people not maintaining social distancing. An AI system which can detected social distancing breaches in real time has been praised by its creators, but raised worries with privacy advocates.Credit:Paul Jeffers Lead researcher Professor Dian Tjondronegoro, an expert in the integration of AI and business innovation, said they moved to allay any privacy concerns around the system by ensuring that no data was stored by it at any time. "We knew we couldn't keep everything on the server because it would be very slow in processing and there are also privacy concerns," he said.