Florida man blames wrongful arrest on "error-prone" AI facial recognition

U.S. Florida man blames wrongful arrest on "error-prone" AI facial recognition By Alyssa Spady June 10, 2026 / 7:30 PM EDT / CBS News Add CBS News on Google When police arrested Richard Dillon in 2023 for allegedly trying to "lure a child" away from a McDonald's in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, he told them he was more than 300 miles away at the time of the crime. The key evidence police used to puncture his alibi: facial recognition software matched an image of the suspect to Dillon's photo.Dillon was later cleared, and on Wednesday he became a plaintiff in a new ACLU lawsuit filed against  the Jacksonville Beach Police Department and others over what he believes was a case of misuse of the AI-driven image matching technology"Police let an error-prone artificial intelligence system stand in for an investigation," they argue in their complaint. The case is the latest attempt to establish guardrails for powerful new technology that police are increasingly using to solve one of the toughest aspects of any investigation — when they have an image of a suspect, but not that person's identity. Facial recognition is an increasingly common law enforcement tool, with public databases holding images of 117 million Americans, according to the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School. Jacksonville Beach police and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office both declined to comment. The episode began in November 2023, when police say a man approached a 12-year-old in a McDonald's and tried to lure her away from her parents. A month later, Dillon received a call from Jacksonville Beach Police Officer Scott O'Connell. He says that during the call, O'Connell "accused me over and over again of a heinous crime that I knew I didn't commit". Dillon told CBS News he remembers thinking "my life is over. … AI says I did this, how am I going to prove that I didn't?" During the phone call with O'Connell, Dillon says he denied involvemen...