AI-powered police body cameras, once taboo, get tested on Canadian city’s ‘watch list’ of faces
About 50 officers will pilot facial-recognition bodycams targeting 6,341 flagged individuals with serious offenses, operating only in daylight through December for safety and privacy evaluation.
- The Edmonton Police Service announced Tuesday it will trial Axon’s facial-recognition-enabled bodycams through December to assess feasibility with 50 officers.
- Restricting detection to four metres, Axon Enterprise explained the system runs in silent mode, discards non-matches immediately, deletes still images after the test, and officers activate it during investigations.
- On Dec. 2, Alberta's information and privacy commissioner Diane McLeod received a privacy impact assessment and is reviewing it as she and former Axon ethics board members warn of accuracy and privacy risks; the Edmonton police commission will review results before deciding future use in 2026.
- The pilot targets a watch list of 6,341 individuals and an additional warrant list of 7,000 people, with Axon CEO Rick Smith describing it as early-stage research.
47 Articles
47 Articles
AI-Powered Police Body Cameras, Once Taboo, Get Tested on Canadian City's 'Watch List' of Faces
Police body cameras equipped with artificial intelligence have been trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a “high risk” watch list in the Canadian city of Edmonton, a live test of whether facial recognition technology shunned as too intrusive could have a place in policing throughout North America.
AI-powered police body cameras, once taboo, get tested on Canadian city’s ‘watch list’ of faces
Police body cameras equipped with artificial intelligence have been trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a “high risk” watch list in the Canadian city of Edmonton, a live test of whether facial recognition technology shunned as too intrusive could have a place in policing throughout North America. But six years after…
Associated Press News
AI-powered police body cameras, once taboo, get tested on Canadian city's 'watch list' of faces
Police in Edmonton, Canada, have started a pilot project using AI-equipped body cameras to detect faces on a "high risk" watch list.
Edmonton Police Launch Pilot of Body Cameras Equipped With AI-Powered Facial Recognition
The Edmonton Police Service is testing new body-worn camera technology powered by machine learning, aiming to help officers in the field identify “dangerous” individuals and those with outstanding arrest warrants for serious crimes. To do that, the police service said the mug shots of nearly 7,000 individuals have been compiled into a database for officers to assess the real-time effectiveness of the facial recognition body-worn cameras provided…
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