The new “appearance alerts” capability will help commercial organisations, such as educational institutions and hospitals, accelerate response times by identifying people of interest in enterprise settings. For example, the technology can alert the security team at a local high school when a banned or flagged individual has entered the campus.

People of interest are identified based on a secure, controlled watch list created and maintained by authorised users at the commercial organisation. For organisations that use the new ACC software and license their Avigilon cameras for facial recognition, cameras will seek to identify potential matches based on the watch list. If a potential match is found, the user is alerted within the ACC software, and security personnel can then determine whether further investigation or action is necessary.

“Our latest ACC software delivers substantial benefits to our commercial customers by offering facial recognition technology in a secure and controlled manner,” said John Kedzierski, senior vice president, Video Security Solutions, Motorola Solutions. “The appearance alerts capability enables our customers to move from a reactive approach – staring at a wall of video feeds where critical information can be easily missed – to a proactive approach that brings important information directly to authorised users so they can make better-informed decisions.”

“It’s important to note that we view facial recognition as an aid that can improve the decision-making of the user – it does not make consequential decisions or initiate actions on its own. We refer to this approach as ‘human in the loop,’ and it is foundational to the way we apply AI,” added Kedzierski.

ACC’s new facial recognition act as a reference to demonstrate Motorola Solutions’ commitment to the responsible use of artificial intelligence as well as individual privacy rights. Data stewardship is integral to these new capabilities, and the company aims to build compliance controls into its products to support this. For example, user authentication is required for these capabilities, audit logs of user actions are generated, data retention periods for the watch list can be specified within the application, and records can be expunged or deleted on demand as well as verified through auditing and reporting. Data is locally hosted, owned and controlled by the business or school. The data used to train the AI algorithms is also thoroughly evaluated, ensuring sufficient quantity, quality and diversity to ensure high accuracy and consistent performance.