Police to use AI to identify child abuse images
Plan would cut costs and help officers avoid psychological trauma
Police forces are planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) systems to identify images of child abuse, in a bid to prevent officers from suffering psychological trauma.
Image recognition software is already used by the Metropolitan Police’s forensics department, which last year searched more than 53,000 seized devices for incriminating evidence, The Daily Telegraph reports. But the systems are not “sophisticated enough to spot indecent images and video”.
However, plans are being developed to move sensitive data collected by police to cloud providers such as Google and Microsoft, according to the newspaper.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
This would allow specialists to harness the tech giants’ massive computing power for analytics, without needing to invest in a multimillion-pound hardware infrastructure.
It would also reduce the risk of police officers suffering psychological trauma as a result of analysing the images, as they would largely be removed from the process.
The Metropolitan’s chief of digital forensics, Mark Stokes, told The Daily Telegraph: “We have to grade indecent images for different sentencing, and that has to be done by human beings right now.
“You can imagine that doing that for year on year is very disturbing.”
With the help of Silicon Valley providers, AI could be trained to detect abusive images “within two to three years”, Stokes adds.
Image searches is not the only use of AI technology by the authorities. In May, The Verge reported that Durham Police were planning to use AI technology to determine whether arrested suspects should remain in custody.
The system, which was trialled over the summer, gauges a suspect’s risk to society based on a range of factors including the severity of their crime and whether they are a “flight risk”.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
'Make legal immigration a more plausible option'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By Harold Maass, The Week US Published
-
LA-to-Las Vegas high-speed rail line breaks ground
Speed Read The railway will be ready as soon as 2028
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
Israel's military intelligence chief resigns
Speed Read Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva is the first leader to quit for failing to prevent the Hamas attack in October
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
AI is causing concern among the LGBTQ community
In the Spotlight One critic believes that AI will 'always fail LGBTQ people'
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
When even art is artificial
Opinion The AI threat to human creativity
By William Falk Published
-
The push for media literacy in education amid the rise of AI
In the Spotlight A pair of congresspeople have introduced an act to mandate media literacy in schools
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
The complex environmental toll of artificial intelligence
The explainer AI is very much mostly not green technology
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
Artificial history
Opinion Google's AI tailored the past to fit modern mores, but only succeeded in erasing real historical crimes
By Theunis Bates Published
-
AI is recreating the voices of mass shooting victims
The Explainer The parents of these victims are using the AI to try and lobby Congress for gun control
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
The murky world of AI training
Under the Radar Despite public interest in artificial intelligence models themselves, few consider how those models are trained
By Austin Chen, The Week UK Published
-
Is Google's new AI bot 'woke'?
Talking Points Gemini produced images of female popes and Black Vikings. Now the company has stepped back.
By Joel Mathis, The Week US Published