Facial Recognition Led to Wrongful Arrests. So Detroit Is Making Changes.

In January 2020, Robert Williams spent 30 hours in a Detroit jail because facial recognition technology suggested he was a criminal. The match was wrong, and Mr. Williams sued.

On Friday, as part of a legal settlement over his wrongful arrest, Mr. Williams got a commitment from the Detroit Police Department to do better. The city adopted new rules for police use of facial recognition technology that the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Mr. Williams, says should be the new national standard.

“We hope that it moves the needle in the right direction,” Mr. Williams said.

Mr. Williams was the first person known to be wrongfully arrested based on faulty facial recognition. But he wasn’t the last. The Detroit police arrested at least two other people as a result of facial recognition searches gone awry, including a woman who was charged with carjacking when she was eight months pregnant.

Law enforcement agencies across the country use facial recognition technology to try to identify criminals whose misdeeds are caught on camera. In Michigan, the software compares an unknown face to those in a database of mug shots or drivers’ license photos. In other jurisdictions, the police use tools, like Clearview AI, that search through photos scraped from social media sites and the public internet.

One of the most important new rules adopted in Detroit is that the images of people identified via facial recognition technology can no longer be shown to an eyewitness in a photo lineup unless there is other evidence that links them to the crime.

“The pipeline of ‘get a picture, slap it in a lineup’ will end,” said Phil Mayor, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. of Michigan. “This settlement moves the Detroit Police Department from being the best-documented misuser of facial recognition technology into a national leader in having guardrails in its use.”