When it comes to facial recognition, Amazon is out on helping the police for now.
Amazon announced on Wednesday it would stop supplying U.S. police officers with its facial recognition technology for one year amid a nationwide push for police reform.
Ironically, Amazon’s announcement comes two days after IBM said it was exiting the facial recognition business, with CEO Arvind Krishna calling on Congress to enact reforms to advance racial justice and combat systemic racism
Critics of the technology have pointed to a past study showing Amazon’s “Rekognition” service struggled to identify the gender of individuals with darker skin.
Facial recognition has always been problematic towards people of color. Amazon wants to protect those expressing their voices during the civil unrest and don’t want to be morally responsible for someone, or even the wrong one, getting into another situation with law enforcement.
