Police around Australia are monitoring an AI-assisted facial recognition camera trial delivering multiple arrests, including three during a media event to spruik the technology.
More than 130,000 faces were scanned in the first week of the Western Australian police initiative, which led to 18 arrests and the identification of 21 registered child sex offenders.
"I already know that my colleagues, other police commissioners in other jurisdictions, are watching this trial closely to see how it goes," WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters on Thursday.
"They're very interested in rolling that out."
Three more arrests happened in less than an hour during a press conference to crow about the success of the trial at the Mirrabooka Shopping Centre bus station, in Perth's northeastern suburbs.
They included a young mother wanted over an alleged serious assault, a man wanted over multiple serious offences, and a woman who allegedly failed to appear in court.
"It keeps us busy," Mr Blanch said.
"I've seen a couple of the updates during the week, where we've run out of arrest vans very quickly."
The technology scans people's faces and compares to them to images of 8000 people in the WA community who have an outstanding arrest warrant or a child sex conviction.
"Your information is not stored and it is deleted immediately," Mr Blanch said as he sought to allay fears of law-abiding people surveilled by the technology.
"It is a piece of technology that is specifically designed to protect the privacy of most West Australians doing the absolute right thing."
The AI-assisted system was deployed in public areas including shopping centres, entertainment precincts and train and bus stations across Perth during the first week of the five-month trial and generated two false alerts.
The public were generally positive about it and shoplifting was down in areas it was deployed, Mr Blanch said.
It also helped to identify two missing people, whose images were added to the database.
"Sadly, in all communities, we have people with dementia, we have people that go missing, and loved ones report those people," Mr Blanch said.
"We do upload those images, helping families reunite them with their loved ones, and we've had two successes this week on that."
