Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother from Tennessee, spent nearly six months in jail after an artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition system mistakenly linked her to a bank fraud case in North Dakota. Lipps, who has never been to North Dakota, was arrested at gunpoint in July while babysitting four children, after Fargo police used facial recognition software to identify her as a suspect in an organised fraud investigation.
According to local news outlet InForum, Lipps was charged with four counts of unauthorised use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft. She remained in a Tennessee jail for nearly four months without bail while awaiting extradition to North Dakota. Her attorney, Jay Greenwood, questioned the reliance on facial recognition, stating: 'If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper.'
Lipps was eventually released on Christmas Eve after her lawyer obtained bank records proving she was more than 1,200 miles away in Tennessee at the time of the fraud. However, Fargo police did not arrange her return journey, leaving her stranded. Local defence attorneys and a non-profit, the F5 Project, helped cover her travel and accommodation costs.
The experience has had lasting consequences for Lipps, who lost her home, car, and dog while incarcerated. She told WDAY News that no one from the Fargo police department has apologised. This case is one of several recent incidents where AI facial recognition has led to wrongful arrests, including a Baltimore student mistakenly flagged for a bag of crisps and a UK man arrested for a burglary in a city he had never visited.
