Paris Completes Full-Scale Tests For AI Body Scanner Cameras Ahead Of 2024 Olympics

The following report is by French paper TF1 , translated to English:

Smile, you are filmed and analyzed by artificial intelligence. RATP and SNCF have experimented this week with algorithmic video surveillance, first during the concert group the Black Eyed Peas, which took place in the hall of the Paris La Defense Arena on Saturday, April 20th.

Signs and posters have been installed at the entrances and exits of the testing areas to warn users. “It’s a test, we’ll see, I won’t feel safer”, entrusts one of them to TF1, [while] others seem more confident: “We see that technology is not only used for negative purposes, it can also be positive and avoid this kind of attack problem especially for events that bring together a lot of people.”

Crowd Movements And Forgotten Luggage Spotted

Concretely, the video cameras installed in the stations Nanterre-Prefecture of RER A and La Defense-Grande Arche of RER A and line 1 of the metro in the first case, then those of the 118 cameras installed at the Paris-Gare station in Lyon and the Garigliano bridge will be coupled with artificial intelligence. This system must make it possible to identify a non-compliance with the direction of traffic, the crossing of a prohibited zone, etc, a crowd movement or a forgotten luggage and to report it to the police.

“In case of abandoned luggage, the object will be detected and an alert will be sent to an operator so that he can make decisions”, says Alan Ferbach, co-founder of Videtics, a startup that operates one of the AIs that will be used for the Olympics. Another situation: at the slightest movement of abnormal crowd, a red frame is added around the screen to report the anomaly to the police.

Video surveillance without facial recognition ?

While these smart cameras can scan up to 25 situations per second, authorities say they will not allow the use of facial recognition. “At the moment, the law does not allow the deployment of facial recognition and especially the government has never wanted to implement a facial recognition device”, said Thomas Dautieu, director of legal support at the Commission nationale de l’informatique et des freedoms (Cnil)…