Bastrop County Commissioners approved a licensing agreement for an artificial intelligence technology that will assist the Sheriff’s Office with future cases.
Long story short
The one-year licensing agreement with New York City-based Clearview AI carries a price tag of $17,100 that will be paid for with forfeiture funds, according to county documents. Forfeiture funds are assets seized by law enforcement, according to the Department of Justice.
“Clearview AI is another tool to help with identification of persons involved in a case, helping serve justice for responsible parties,” Bastrop County Sheriff Maurice Cook said. “It is highly effective and accurate.”
What we know
Clearview AI offers clients a variety of resources, including:
- A database of publicly accessible online facial imagery
- Sources for where each facial image originally appeared online
- Tools to facilitate oversight, compliance, auditing, sharing and reporting
Chief Legal Officer Thomas Mulcaire of Clearview AI emphasized how his business stands apart from the competition.
“Vendors offering only mugshot database searches fundamentally cannot and do not provide equivalent functionality to Clearview AI's comprehensive solution due to Clearview AI’s capability to additionally search public online images,” he said in a statement.
Mulcaire touted Clearview AI’s more than 99% accuracy in the identification process, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Face Recognition Vendor Test.
The outlook
The service will become accessible April 1 and expire March 31, 2027, according to the licensing agreement.
