In Baltimore on Oct. 20, 2025, a 17-year-old student named Taki Allen was sitting outside his high school after football practice when an artificial intelligence-enhanced surveillance camera falsely identified the Doritos bag in his pocket as a gun. Within moments police cars arrived, officers drew their weapons and Allen was forced to his knees and handcuffed while they searched him. All they found was a crumpled bag of chips. The AI’s misidentification and the human decisions that followed turned a normal evening into a traumatic confrontation.
On Dec. 24, 2025, Angela Lipps, a Tennessee grandmother, was released after spending five months in jail because facial recognition software had incorrectly connected her to fraud crimes in North Dakota, a state she had never visited. Police had arrested her at gunpoint while she was babysitting her four grandchildren.
