Rekognition still racist, politicians desperate over deepfakes, and a good reason to go to (some) music festivals

Roundup Here's our latest summary of AI news beyond what we've already covered. Over 40 festivals pledge to not use facial recognition: A campaign against facial recognition led by the nonprofit Fight for the Future has led to over 40 music festivals publicly committing that they would not use the technology. Evan Greer, deputy director, and Tom Morello, a musician and guitarist for rock band Rage Against the Machine, teamed up to pen an op-ed celebrating the efforts to push back on the smart AI cameras. "Over the last month, artists and fans waged a grassroots war to stop Orwellian surveillance technology from invading live music events," they wrote on Buzzfeed News. Our campaign pushed more than 40 of the world's largest music festivals -- like Coachella, Bonnaroo, and SXSW -- to go on the record and state clearly that they have no plans to use facial recognition technology at their events." Musicians and fans were invited to write to their favorite festival organizers, urging them to not support facial recognition. Now, the list of festivals that have confirmed they won't be using the tech has grown. There are still a few top names that have yet to respond, however, including Burning Man and Outside Lands. You can see the complete list here. Amazon's facial recognition tool fails on black athletes: Amazon's controversial Rekognition software mistook the faces of 27 black athletes competing in American football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, as suspected criminals in a mugshot database. An experiment by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed the dangers of relying on facial recognition technology like Rekognition. "This technology is flawed," said Duron Harmon, a football player for the New England Patriots safety whose face was false identified in the experiment. "If it misidentified me, my teammates, and other professional athletes in an experiment, imagine the real-life impact of false matches.