Dystopian error leads to arrest of man for burglary in city he's never visited

A man has spoken out on national TV after he was arrested for a burglary in Milton Keynes, a city he has never visited in his life which is over 100 miles away.

Alvi Choudhury appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss his ongoing claim against Thames Valley Police after being mistakenly arrested due to their use of new AI technology.

Alvi, 26, is a software engineer from Southampton and is of south Asian heritage. This is not the first time he has been arrested for a crime he did not commit sadly as he was arrested in 2021 after being assaulted on a night out in Portsmouth.

Police kept hold of his mugshot from this false arrest and, using new AI Facial recognition software, identified him as the suspect of a burglary.

Alvi spoke about the experience of being arrested on ITV's Good Morning Britain, saying: “It was very shocking... I was working remotely that day and I was speaking to a client. I hear a knock on the door and then I go downstairs. I open the door and I see two police officers and they were actually leaving and I opened the door and I said hello officers with a smile on my face saying ‘I'm not in trouble, am I?’ as a joke.”

He spoke out on Good Morning Britain (ITV)

He said the officer asked for his name before telling him he was under arrest for a burglary in Milton Keynes from December of last year.

“I was completely shocked. Never been more shocked in my life… they arrested me. I allowed them to search my premises, go through my phones. I had an abundance of

evidence that I was at work on the day of alleged crime.”

He added that he has never been to Milton Keynes and was held in custody for 11 hours before they even spoke to him to take evidence he had.

Alvi was under the impression his information would have been removed, however they removed his DNA but not his custody photo.

He said that when he later saw the footage it ‘didn’t look like him at all’ and claimed that a Thames Valley officer had told him his arrest ‘may have been the result of bias within facial recognition technology’.

The man, who is of south Asian heritage, added that a police officer laughed when he asked if it looked like him and told The Guardian: “I was very angry, because the kid looked about 10 years younger than me.

The use of facial recognition software has been very controversial due to its in-built racial bias (ITV)

“Everything was different. Skin was lighter. Suspect looked 18 years old. His nose was bigger. He had no facial hair. His eyes were different. His lips were smaller than mine. I just assumed that the investigative officer saw that I was a brown person with curly hair and decided to arrest me.”

This points to a wider issue in the implementation of AI-assisted facial recognition technology, which has been found to disproportionately misidentify ethnic minorities.

In December it was found that the rate of false positives for black (5.5%) and Asian (4.0%) faces far outweighed the number amongst white (0.04%) faces. On Good Morning Britain they pointed out that black women were almost 250 times more likely to be misidentified than a white man using the technology.

A spokesperson for Thames Valley police has said: “While we apologise for the distress caused to the complainant in this case, their arrest was based on the investigating officers’ own visual assessment that the individual matched the suspect in CCTV footage following a retrospective facial recognition match, and was not influenced by racial profiling.

“To confirm, retrospective facial recognition technology did initially provide intelligence, but did not determine the arrest.

“Although later enquiries eliminated the individual from the investigation, this does not make the arrest unlawful.

“We continue to use policing tools responsibly while striving to improve and build trust in our communities.”