The city of Detroit has agreed to pay $300,000 to a man who was wrongly accused of shoplifting due to a flawed facial recognition technology match. The settlement also includes changes to how the city's police force uses facial recognition technology to identify suspects.
The man, Robert Williams, had his driver's license picture incorrectly flagged as a likely match for a suspect captured on security video at a watch store theft in 2018. Williams, a Black man, was arrested in front of his family two years later, only to have the charges eventually dropped after spending more than 24 hours in jail.
