SquirrelWithATophat
6736
442
4
https://www.wowt.com/2026/03/15/grandmother-says-she-was-wrongfully-put-jail-crime-due-facial-recognition-error/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/12/tennessee-grandmother-ai-fraud
Of all the dystopian nightmares we could have gotten, we ended up with the knockoff dystopia that's so shitty even Wish wouldn't try selling it.
doctorId
And it's not gonna go away because it gives the cops a way to justify going after anyone they want
Garwoodxx
The bigger issue is the police culture that you are guilty until proven innocent. This permeates society starting with Republican “law and order” culture and is echoed by complaint media that venerates first responders. They are all to lazy to think.
MeestowKitty
Look, guys, if you just don't resist arrest, or fight tyranny and oppression with violence, we'll vote the good guys who let this happen in, in the midterms that aren't going to be cancelled, and then we can fight it out in court later. What happens between now and then is just the cost of doing business. /s
Luvlyquants
Time for a good lawyer and nice payback.
EnigmaticEmpress
Nah they'll get off on some sort of bullshit or qualified immunity and even if even if anything does hapen it will be just the state paying for it (so in a roundabout way, herself) not any of the people responsible for this travesty. The only justice you'll ever see for incidnts like these are mob justice.
onepinksheep
AI is a tool and should be treated as a tool, and like any tool, there should be human oversight. False positives happen every time even before the rise of AI, that's why every result is supposed to be checked by an actual person. But these morons are taking the word of AI as absolute truth.
jemappelletosca
Laziness reigns supreme
MeeseOnABeam
a law firm should be smacking their lips with this one, surely
zHurk777
*law firms. not a law firm.
SirDaemos
Lets not ignore the dog. Where is the dog? I'm not above going full John Wick.
gorillaClutch
ok fuck AI but the people willing to lock her up based on AI recommendation deserve all the responsibility for this, fuck them to hell
nanaeito13
Does anyone know if she has a go fund me?
SolidIronBanana
Awesome! Now let's give AI guns and zero human oversight!
chicharrone
Is her dog ok?
wejustdontknow
I'm going to guess that it probably isn't. The thing people don't realize about getting arrested is that it removes you from your daily activities. So, you don't show at work the next day. That's a "no call/no show" and will get you fired most places. You aren't there to feed your pets or get your kids at school. That's a dead pet and worse. You aren't there to pay a bill on time. That's a repoed car or power shut off. Etc. That's a default. So, you may be totally innocent. But you're ruined.
Blud4BludGod
I went to jail for two weeks once over what amounted to a clerical error. Literally years to recover from some of the myriad setbacks it caused me. It fucked my life up so bad- and that was just two weeks. You are right, people don't get it.
iusedtodream
Well I'm sure she's fine and not at all traumatized and broken.
zHurk777
To be fair she was already poor, so she should be fine. /s
joshuasplinth
I had never thought about the fact that I might be tracked by Siri. Good luck!
cytherians
Authorities: "Oh. Sorry, our bad."
Woman: "Who is going to restore what I lost?"
Authorities:
Corrodias
It's nice to imagine they'd apologize, but lol, no. Actually, they dumped her on the street a thousand miles away from home with nothing.
ilovetraveler
Her dog? https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1bGF1djRrc21nZmgybDBzdjVwMTlycHk0YjhqaDM0Zmd5cWVoZng0bCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/JCD1jbu3UgBby/200w.webp
Clockworkdancerobot
She spent MONTHS in jail when a simple search would have cleared her. AI will be the excuse to jam people up like weed was.
LitchLitch
The worst part for me is when her lawyer proved she couldnt be the suspect the cops just let her go
On Christmas Eve
In Fargo!
No money, no help getting hime, not even a decent jacket.
The loca defense attorneys passed the hat for enough money to get her a ticket home and helped get a new apartment.
circlebreaker
Shit like that is so galling, it's fucking unforgivable. It's stunning to me that people generally still have faith in modern policing. Every single one of the worthless pigs involved with her case and working the PD that night just let it slide, an innocent elderly woman cut loose on a frigid night, and none of them had the decency to do the right thing.
SometimesOthertimesAnytime
Sue the police, the city for using it, and the company that made it. Hopefully, one of those will stick.
ulfgarBentbeak
It will only stick against the city, for their employee not doing do diligence to confirm the A.I. was correct. So only the city's tax payers are on the hook for it.
GenialerTyp
Maybe Ai created the false alarm. But there should have been several humans involved from the moment of the arest, the judge, to the officers in prison. Several humans in the row must have fucked up.
CaptCrobar
Deflock.org
ElbowDeepInAHeadlessHorseman
Not the first case, nor the last, this shit will only become more common as AI sees wider adoption: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQnayDgiqc4
Filanwizard
IMO her house and car should be required to be returned and the AI company billed for it.
HandoB4Javert
bindedig
Sounds like Flock is at it again
MajorNikon
As if that shit wasn’t fucked up enough all on its own, they just released her into the ND cold with no winter clothing and no way home
Hrafna55
And she lost her home because of this.
micuu
On Christmas Eve, too
ZackWester
the weirdest part was that the by US law the cops did nothing wrong. Like sorry if I pick up someone and the drop them off some side road in winter and I can see that they dont have winter clothing I would be charged whit atempted murder (the legal is placeing a person into a situvation of danger... think dumping someone in the oceaon no the action itself does not kill but the fact that a person wont surive long on there own swimming in the ocean). same whit stranding them somewhere in winter.
circlebreaker
Typical for pigs ACAB 1312.
Comet260
🐽🐽🐽🐽
Kess9215
https://alpr.watch/
get involved with your city reps and stop these cameras from being erected in your town
Muffyns
Bring back those full face mask that are just random faces and never go out in public without them i guess
FredGarvinMaleProstitute
https://deflock.org/
Kess9215
this is Louis Rossman's channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl2mFZoRqjw_ELax4Yisf6w
EnderKing567
HAIL TO THE KING BABBBYYYYY
boxbackknitties
Sue their balls off.
FlyByGRider
Might be hard to get a lawyer when you're broke and homeless
geotard
They smell money and will come crawling out of the shadows "to help"
Xerxes4242
Not good enough, this is going to happen over and over again. People need to wake up and send a clear message this shit is not ok.
boxbackknitties
You’re right.
circlebreaker
Not good enough. Lock the responsible parties in stocks and flense them, this shit is outrageous, it's just the newest trend in lazy investigation and overzealous prosecution used to railroad random citizens. They should be afraid to completely destroy someone's life, and an elderly woman in this case, at that.
boxbackknitties
You’re 100% correct. Just a kneejerk reaction on my part.
ripstripsart
Also, THIS PROCESS SHOULDN’T RUIN YOUR LIFE!! I don’t know why we all just accept a justice system that can literally KILL YOU if you’re simply arrested. We shouldn’t really even have public arrest records of people who weren’t convicted after the fact, it should be illegal for employers to ask about your arrest history, and your current job should remain open for you during incarceration. BTW, it’s all basically left-overs from the Jim Crowe era (not that Jim Crowe ever really ended).
animatronicChristmasChickens
Qualified Immunity, aka "Fuck you with impunity"
dextarrogue
Lol no. Qualified immunity would not apply here.
Daliena06
I think Lethal Weapon 2 had some lessons on a vaguely similar topic..
mikeatike
mikeatike
Mmbear
QI doesn’t prevent civil suits just criminal charges against the police. But the AI company is who she really needs to go for. Their use of this tech for this purpose needs to financially hurt them to the point that they dont want to take on the liability.
Filanwizard
I bet however the AI company does not have that and their faulty product is what got her in this situation.
Corrodias
Oh don't worry, I'm sure they have a clause in the contract saying it's not their fault if they get it wrong.
ulfgarBentbeak
A.I. company will have a clause in their usage contract that all "flags" in the system need to be confirmed by humans. This allows them to kick liability back to the cops, who have Qualified Immunity. One of the Main reasons capitalists want A.I. is so they can outsource liability to something that can't be meaningfully held liable.
Unindoctrinated
Sure, there are innumerable reasons to hate AI, but in this case, like many other similar cases, the AI facial recognition program flagged a 'potential' match, then lazy and/or incompetent cops made a conscious choice to not do a required part of their job which is to actually verify that it was correct.
AI sucks, but cops suck more.
ulfgarBentbeak
I would accept your argument if the A.I. companies weren't selling the product with the promise that you wouldn't need to check, even if it then says you do in the fine print. Consumer protection laws have become far too lax in the US, and companies can now just straight lie and it's on the consumer to know it's untrue. Last year a court ruled that "boneless wings" don't have to be boneless nor from the wing part of a bird, because no reasonable consumer would expect that to be true, apparently.
Unindoctrinated
The facial recognition software companies won't license the use of their programs to agencies that won't make verification before action a required part of the job. It's a simple way for them to legally cover their ass.
TorrentialUpPour
Clearly they did license it to such a company.
ulfgarBentbeak
Yeah, but that requirement will be in the fine print, and the company marketing will be telling the Agency Employees that it has 100% accuracy rate. That it will save time and ensure there are no mistakes. "it's perfectly accurate, you don't need to check!*" - my point is that consumer protection laws are so lax you can market a product with promises that are direct contradictions to the description or directions of the product.
Unindoctrinated
On looking into this a bit deeper I found that there actually was human oversight. Unfortunately, that human was a cop.
The facial recognition software did mistakenly flag Angela Lipps, but then a Fargo detective looked at Lipps' social media and driver's license, and determined she appeared to be the suspect based on her facial features, body type and hair. He didn't do any further investigation.
As per usual, it's the cops that are the problem.
ulfgarBentbeak
Sure, the cops not doing their job correctly are the root of the problem, but A.I. is exasperating the issue. It's the A.I. companies telling the cops to use there product for this, and they should trust it despite evidence to the contrary. It's because of that unfounded trust, that the officer feels secure in not following up and investigating. Without A.I. the cops wouldn't have caught anyone, since they weren't investigating.
LitchLitch
The problem is not the AI you mewling schmucks.
The problem is the cops in Fargo. They utterly failed to do their job. They were criminally incompetent, utterly lacked humanity, and were so stupid they need adult supervision.
The AI is just a very useful tool they misused from the word go.
Causeitsmadeofmeat
AI is the Ponzi scheme for the modern age
LitchLitch
Its really not. It actually fucking works.
MithgarSilvervein
Fuck off, dumbass.
fdoyl001
"fuck ai" in this context isn't just about the technology, it's the culture that surrounds it. it's the tech bros promising the world, it's the public that believes them, it's the cops that don't give a fuck about the truth. it's everything.
circlebreaker
It's both. If it weren't AI being used to try and lasso a slam dunk case, the shit-eating halfwit pigs would just find another way to fuck it up the same as they always do.
Filanwizard
The AI gave the cops incorrect data and while they should have verified, it does not change that the product is faulty and as such the AI company should be held fully liable for damages done by their faulty product.
LitchLitch
The AI system did what it was supposed to do, it found someone that looked like their target.
The vendore EXPLICITLY say that the person they match may not be the subject. They told the cops not to use it that way but they did anyways.
If you use an agle grinder to dust your TV screen it is not makitas fault.
dontrike
It's both in this case. The tool fucked up and then the humans using it didn't double check it and fucked up.
LitchLitch
The right tool didnt fuck up.
Really, compare the pictures to, they look very similar. Thats what the tool does, it finds people that looks like your subject. It did a bang up job of that.
dontrike
The fact you say it's just "similar" is reason enough to say it fucked up by flagging it. Then humans fucked up by not double checking.
Problem is with your "it got close, therefore it did its job" is it didn't take context into account, like where this woman was, which is what it and humans should have done.
LitchLitch
That is what the police should have done, it is not what the AI is trained for, not what its creators said it could do, it is not the AIs fault they tried to use it for something it couldnt do.
dontrike
If all your AI is doing only coming sort of close to matching face then you just have a computer playing a Guess Who board game