AI camera surveillance used across ‘multiple departments’ including NZ Police

BriefCam can be used to go beyond facial recognition - adding 27 other ways of narrowing down a search. Photo / 123rf

By RNZ

A surveillance company New Zealand police use to spot people on camera is celebrating the uptake of artificial intelligence overseas.

Police have used BriefCam since 2020 to analyse CCTV footage for faces and vehicles.

BriefCam, in an industry update, said half the businesses in its global markets now had “AI-enabled” video surveillance.

And a quarter had AI-based systems across “multiple departments”.

A major part of the American companies market is law enforcement, such as US police departments.

BriefCam can be used to go beyond facial recognition - adding 27 other ways of narrowing down a search.

BriefCam also said there were now three times more high-resolution security cameras in use than five years ago.

The video analytics market is forecast to more than quadruple in size to more than $30 billion annually by the end of the decade.

A high-tech stocktake made public in 2020 by New Zealand police revealed their use of BriefCam.

It was categorised with several other systems as having the “capability for targeted and mass surveillance activities that clearly pose high risk”.

Police said in 2020 they did not use it on live CCTV feeds, and only on stored footage to spot “known” faces - suspects.

It could cut the time it took to analyse three months of video footage from six weeks to two hours, they said.