FBI wants to use Amazon Rekognition AI to recognize weapons and explosives

The American FBI wants to use the Amazon Web Services AI Rekognition to recognize certain online content. According to the Department of Justice, the DOJ, the tool is to be used to identify “nudity, weapons and explosives” in images and videos.

From one document from the ministry it appears that the ready-made AI tool under the name Project Tyr should be put into use. For example, the document states: “Amazon Rekognition provides pre-trained and customizable computer vision capabilities to extract information and insights from legally sourced images and videos.” The introduction of the technology is in the ‘initiation phase’ and the FBI wants to specifically tailor the tool to recognize the stated content. No mention is made of Rekognition’s possible facial recognition capabilities. It is not clear how long the federal investigation service intends to use the Amazon service.

So far, Amazon has indicated that it will not supply facial recognition software to US police. Opposite The Register reports the tech giant that this still applies in principle, provided the facial recognition tool is used in investigations related to crime. The tool may be used to locate missing persons. The medium writes that Amazon has all along offered AWS tools such as Rekognition to other government institutions and third parties, even when these third parties offered the tools to police units. As far as we know, the FBI must meet certain conditions set by Amazon in order to use the tool.

Amazon Rekognition is an API that can be used via AWS for the recognition of various content in images. According to Amazon the AI ​​can recognize objects, concepts, people, circumstances, activities and text. The tech giant has wanted for years to first introduce legislation regarding facial recognition used by the police.