More than a million people have had their faces scanned in a trial of real-time facial recognition technology in Western Australia, resulting in 122 arrests and nine incorrect alerts.
WA police said under the five-month trial, which concluded on Saturday, the technology scanned 1,380,882 faces after 100 deployments across 43 regional and metropolitan locations.
Alongside the 122 arrests, the alerts led officers to engage with 146 registered sex offenders and locate 10 people for a welfare check.
A police spokesperson confirmed the system generated nine incorrect alerts against the total 1.38m scans, meaning there was an error rate of 0.00065%.
“We will only know what the incorrect rate is when the 122 people arrested have their day in court,” he said.