use of Artificial Intelligence - disclosure and inventory

The Problem

Police across the country increasingly use artificial intelligence (AI) in criminal investigations to help generate leads, gather evidence, and draft reports. This technology, however, is still new and may be unreliable and error-prone — including by misreading visual clues like license plates or “hallucinating” assertions with no basis in fact.

Despite those risks, there are few state laws requiring police to disclose the use of AI in individual cases to defendants, and many law enforcement agencies don’t have publicly available policies. Without that transparency, the accuracy and legality of the AI tools in use will remain challenged. This raises both accuracy and due process concerns, undermining both a person’s right to a fair trial and possibly resulting in a wrongful conviction. There are also public safety concerns: when the wrong person is convicted, an actual perpetrator remains free and without the ability to review the use of AI in court, unreliable tools or inappropriate uses of AI can slip under the radar and continue to undermine public safety over a longer period of time.

Fortunately, prosecutorial oversight and the adversarial criminal justice system serve as quality controls to find exactly these sorts of issues — a goal that can only be achieved through transparency.available policies on their use of AI.

The Solutions

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MODEL STATUTE

The Policing Project’s model statute on Artificial Intelligence Use and Inventory requires policing agencies to conduct an inventory of, and develop a publicly available policy for, any use of artificial intelligence to aid criminal investigations, whether to establish leads or corroborate suspicion, or used to write police reports. It also requires agencies to disclose the use of AI in police reports, so that this information will be available to prosecutors, allowing them to comply with legal obligations to disclose the use of AI to criminal defendants.

To read frequently asked questions about disclosures of police use of AI in criminal investigations, click here.

To read the full model statute on Artificial Intelligence Use and Inventory, click here.

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MODEL POLICY

The Policing Project’s model policy for policing agencies on artificial intelligence includes ten provisions to serve as baseline requirements for the governance of AI systems in the public safety context. Although these provisions offer general guidance on the use of AI, additional policies may be necessary for certain specific tools.

To read the full model AI policy for policing agencies on artificial intelligence, click here.