San Francisco (AFP)

IBM announced Monday that it intends to end the sale of general purpose facial recognition software after protests against racism and police violence have followed one another in the United States for two weeks.

The American computer giant declared to be firmly opposed "to the use of any technology for the purposes of mass surveillance, racial profiling, violations of basic human rights and freedoms or any objective contrary to our values", in a letter to members of Congress from IBM executive chief Arvind Krishna.

"We think it's time to open a national dialogue on facial recognition technologies to determine if and how they should be used by law enforcement," he said.

It can be used to authenticate users of a service (smartphone, payment system, etc.) but also to identify people within a group of individuals physically present or in a photo database, for example.

Facial recognition "can help the police protect communities but must not promote discrimination or racial injustice," says Arvind Krishna. "Suppliers and customers who use artificial intelligence share the responsibility of ensuring that AI is unbiased, especially when it comes to law enforcement."

The United States has been rocked by a wave of protest against institutionalized racism and police brutality since the death of George Floyd, an African-American who was asphyxiated by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.

The boss of IBM is asking Congress to ensure that the officers' mobile cameras and analytical tools are used to report to the police when necessary.

Neema Singh Guliani of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) believes that facial recognition should not be built into these cameras at all.

"We need to invest in technologies that can help bridge the digital divide, not technologies that create surveillance infrastructure and exacerbate police abuse and structural racism," she said in a statement released in response to police reform measures proposed to Congress.

ACLU regularly questions technology companies like Amazon or Microsoft about the potentially abusive or harmful uses of facial recognition.

© 2020 AFP