Five members of US Congress are demanding answers — and an immediate meeting — from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, after a test of Amazon’s Rekognition facial recognition software matched them with mugshots of known criminals, according to official letters obtained by CNET on Thursday, which you can read below.
US Reps. Jimmy Gomez, John Lewis, Luis Gutierrez, Mark DeSaulnier and Sen. Edward Markey were all among those whom the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) matched against a database of 2,500 criminal mugshots using Amazon’s software — which the ACLU pitched as evidence that Congress should consider regulating facial recognition tech.
Obviously, they’d like to know why they were matched — and you can read some of the answers in our post from earlier today, including why Amazon believes the ACLU’s test wasn’t fair.
Watch this: Privacy advocates have issues with Amazon’s facial recognition…
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But that’s not all these Congressmen are asking for: “We request an immediate meeting with you to discuss how to address the defects of this technology in order to prevent inaccurate outcomes,” write Reps. Gomez and Lewis.
And all five Congressmen are prominently asking whether Amazon’s Rekognition software is racially biased, given that it appears to have disproportionally matched people of color to the mugshots.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether Bezos will accept the invitation.
You can read the full letters here:
BuzzFeed News was the first to obtain the letter from Reps. Gomez and Lewis.
CNET’s Laura Hautala contributed to this story.
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