Facial recognition is cool technology with a lot of benefits. But it can also majorly mess up, as a New York teen learned in November.
As Bloomberg reports, 18-year-old Ousmane Bah was arrested and charged with stealing from an Apple store -- based on a photo that looked nothing like him.
Bah believes his face was mistakenly connected to the thief's name in the Apple Store's facial-recognition system. He previously lost a driving permit with no photo, which the thief could have obtained and used as ID in the store.
The teen has sued Apple for $1 billion.
MORE: Here's the One iPhone Setting Everyone Should Change
This isn't the first time facial recognition has led to an arrest. Many governmental agencies, including London's police department, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection have tested using facial recognition screening to yield arrests.
But this case highlights the potential imperfections of such technology, and the importance of double-checking identities. The ACLU tested a recognition software that Amazon uses and found that it falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshot photos, with errors disproportionately impacting members of color.
