A man who was wrongly accused of fraud after AI facial recognition software flagged his image has said he will “never step foot” in a Sports Direct store again.<\/p>\n
A staff member at the Parkgate Shopping Centre in Rotherham had identified Craig Hadley to the programme a few weeks earlier after mistaking him for another “bald-headed, bearded” customer who had defrauded the retailer.<\/p>\n
Sports Direct apologised for the incident, saying it was “genuine mistake”, and added that a formal investigation and further staff training would be undertaken.<\/p>\n
Mr Hadley said: “At first, I thought it was a joke, but then it became clear it was quite serious, and they escorted me out of the shop.”<\/p>\n
He said he had been “really anxious” in the weeks it took to resolve the issue.<\/p>\n
“There was a fear of my photo being in other shops where they might throw me out,” he added.<\/p>\n
“It caused embarrassment, it could cause reputational damage.”<\/p>\n
The software company, Facewatch, deleted Mr Hadley’s image from its database after he had proven his identity to the company and the CCTV had been checked manually.<\/p>\n
Mr Hadley agreed the fraudster, who had been at the till at the same time he had been paying, “looked very similar” to him.<\/p>\n
“I get it was a human error and people make mistakes,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But, when those mistakes can result in people who have done nothing wrong being put on a national database, there needs to be some more checks and balances.”<\/p>\n
Facewatch said its watchlists were “specific and limited only to individuals for whom there is strong and recent evidence of criminal activity”.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the company added: “We are committed to maintaining the highest compliance standards.<\/p>\n
“Our system is regularly audited to ensure our technology is accurate and deployed in responsible, proportionate ways that respect the rights of individuals.”<\/p>\n
Madeleine Stone, from the civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said using software like Facewatch to deal with shoplifting was a “recipe for disaster”.<\/p>\n
“You could be blacklisted from your local shops, placed on a secret watchlist, and that information is shared in all the shops in your area,” she said.<\/p>\n
“There is not necessarily any evidence of wrongdoing and there is no due process.<\/p>\n
“Many people have been really impacted by this.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who was wrongly accused of fraud after AI facial recognition software flagged his image has said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-91659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}