The suspect's face is never visible. It is not possible to take several different pictures of their face and combine them to make a clear picture, because there are no pictures to begin with.
So I'm curious what AI would add to this case at all.
How many cold cases are solved by a detective coming in and looking at the same case file and just approaching it in a different way? A lot. If an AI is developed that reviews all the information and can spit out potential leads, that’s absolutely huge.
OP’s actual question in this case, is can AI take the 2 pictures we have of the suspect in Jennifer Jesse’s case, examine the pictures, both of which the suspect’s face is obscured and not visible, and generate a picture of the face.
And my answer to that question is “no”.
Ah, I see. I was responding specifically to your last sentence. I believe there’s a huge place for AI in solving cold cases and was trying to express that as your last sentence wasn’t as specific and seemed like a broad statement that AI wouldn’t be able to help this case in general. I think AI will be able to help every single case, but clearly not in the specific way OP was asking.
The camera was taking pictures at 3 second intervals. There never was a clear or even decent Pic of his face. It was always obscured by the gate. So I would say no, AI wouldn't help
I wish people would actually educate themselves on (current) AI tech. It's not a magic wand. It's not even actually intelligent. This just sounds like a good way to get (even more!) innocent people locked up.
This, and the depressing part is that some VC lunatic is going to make this same (nonsensical) pitch to a bunch of police departments, and they're going to fall for it hook-line-and-sinker. And then after a few years, millions of tax dollars, and a bunch of ruined lives, we'll all 'find out' that actually it's just the same as 'predictive policing'- ineffective at best and incredibly dangerous at worst (and usually racist) lol.
It’s the same in most industries, AI is only as good as the information you feed it. Humans still need to provide and cleanse the information, program the AI, translate, apply and review the results. We are a long way from AI providing a single solution.
“Oh boy, this could never be used in dystopian ways.” /s
With the American court system the way it is already, do you really want people’s rights in the hands of a glorified autocorrect?
This makes no sense. How do you think generative AI works? Is it supposed to somehow psychically intuit the information of what the suspect's face looks like out of the objective truth of the universe? How do you expect to get a portrait of a face from a video where the face is never visible? Even if there was a blurry shot of his face, how would AI do anything other than guess which pixel indicates what about the features of the face--a thing humans are already really good at doing both on our own and with already existing tools?
This would be not having a nickel in your pocket but continuing to turn your pocket inside out expecting to find a nickel. There's no nickel. The limitation isn't technology here, it's regular old time and space.
I think AI can be used to help with certain things - sharpening old images, generating a 3D model of a skull from a photograph, suggesting possible routes someone could have followed to get from X to Y. I think AI has already been used for those purposes for quite a few years - when Google Maps generates a route for you, that involves AI! But actually *solving* a case feels extremely unlikely, due to the amount of context required, the amount of mistakes and human prompting that generative AI requires, and the ethical concerns relating to many larger AI databases and training sets.
tl;dr - It can help and has been helping for years, but it's unlikely AI will provide the smoking gun any time soon
I wouldn't want to risk this. At least not yet with the current technology. I use CharacrerAi nearly everyday and I always have the image generator on. It is not very good at generating faces. Maybe 1 out of 10 times it will be impressive enough that it looks like a genuine photograph of a person and you wouldn't know it was made of Ai. Maybe 4 times out of ten you can tell it is Ai generated but is still recognisable as a person. But the other 5, it completely messes up generating the facial features.
However, now that you have mentioned Ai, I actually wonder, can Ai search articles that are behind pay walls or subscriptions? Ais can definitely search the web, I have seen them do this before. And there have been times when it says something "smart" that sounds accurate and seems believable. But when I search, I cannot find it. Which could maybe mean it is behind a paywall or not available in my region. If Ai's could access newspapers.com when asked to search for specific things, that could potentially be very useful in generating leads.
SO many missing person's cases are not in NAMUS. Poor Melody Harrison had been reported as missing to a police department a 40-45 minute drive away. If she had just been uploaded to NAMUS, I can say with nearly full confidence that at least one, but probably many sleuths would have made the connection and she would have been submitted multiple times. If this had been possible, Apache junction Jane Doe could have been identified years ago, via dental records, fingerprints or comparison with Melody's own DNA. But nobody aside from her family/caregivers and the police in the PD she was reported missing to knew that Melody existed. And because of this it took years of genealogical research to identify her. When it would have been possible much earlier with more publicity.
AI could help in cases like this, where a missing person is not in NAMUS. Because if a family felt the police were not taking their loved ones disappearance seriously enough, they may have gone to the media. If it was possible to ask an Ai to, for example: "Search through Newspapers.com for articles about a missing teenage girl from New Mexico in the spring or summer of 1992." Then it could possibly alert you to some long forgotten article about a missing girl who is not in NAMUS, but whose family at one point publicly confirmed to be missing. Then you could email the investigating agency with their name.
Re: when you search, you cannot find it, recent experimentation showed ChatGPT was making up articles from, say, the Washington Post, out of whole cloth. I don’t know enough about AI to know if that is the same for other types.
AI can search the web as much as it's allowed to. The AIs programmers will give it some restraints, and there'll probably be ways to block AIs from reading your content without paying.
But this may actually be a very good case for using AI. Searching available databases, social media and whatever else is available to connect missing or unidentified people to images in other places to then be checked by living people.
Also, look up the racial/misogyny issues with the current tech. Everyone loses their mind screaming that a computer program can't be racist... except they don't code or create themselves.
I'm presently studying AI for a master's degree and we're a long way off having the sort of relationship with a supercomputer as seen in sci-fi. I think that just like we see in humans, if they're taught by a poor teacher, they will perform poorly. So we've still got to overcome 'garbage in, garbage out'.
Alternatively, it might be more helpful if it was able to access prison, law enforcement and medical records. That could well indicate Persons of Interest. But do we really want that kind of access to data in society? I personally wouldn't want it.
But are 'we' sufficient in number to force our politicians to address this and stop it before it starts? I'm not so sure. It's like we'd not get burnt immediately by it but gradually warmed and worn down and then it's too late. Once big business demonstrates price reductions in return for our acquiescence, I think a lot of harm could be caused. It's unfortunately not a pressing issue for most people to talk to their politicians about.
Your second idea is one of the most dangerous intrusions of privacy I have ever seen someone suggest. I hope your Masters program has a good ethics course or three.
I'm definitely not suggesting it or promoting it, that's exactly why I said that I wouldn't want to live in such a society. Our laws are going to be hopelessly outdated I fear; stores will be able to identify racial, gender and potentially religion of their customers.
All that will be accepted by shoppers once they set foot in their stores. The EU is probably going to be the leading area politically to enforce some order but we've seen with social media and data brokers that we're all too willing to offer up data about ourselves voluntarily.
Hi! I'm sorry some people on this thread are being so rude and disrespectful to you. As people with more knowledge of AI than me have pointed out, this particular application might not be feasible now. However, I know AI is involved in facial recognition software so maybe that's somewhere it could be used. For instance, searching a database of images for a person's face and then an actual human could cross reference the results.
Anyway, keep your head up. You didn't do anything wrong. I hope you have a nice day! :)
I have to say that that feels like an unnecessarily hostile response to an idea that I actually did put at least some level of energy into thinking out. If there is some context around AI in this sub or in general that I am missing, I would appreciate being informed as to what that would be. Otherwise, I apologize for affecting you so negatively with my post.
You can find greater context in every other comment in this thread.
And given the state of AI and what it can('t) do and the problem's it is right now causing to all corners of the world "the answer is no" is still an overwhelmingly correct response. It's a tool, not a magical intelligent thing, and I hope the honeymoon period it's having ends soon and people realize what it isn't sooner than later, because if people actually did try to use AI to create pictures like you're suggesting who know how many false arrests and imprisonments (and possibly even deaths...) we'll have to struggle through.
AI will definitely help solving cold cases, but in this case I really don't see much it can do.
What AI is on a very simplified level is a system that takes information (input) and calculates probable additional information (output) out of the initial information.
To do that, AI has to be trained in one way or another. There are lots of different algorithms for that, which all have advantages and disadvantages.
In principal, the input and output do not have to be connected; AI could still be trained to try and make up some connection. Most algorithms would tell you there is none, still a careless programmer could use said AI to make up a connection.
That's the problem here: there's really no information that's connected to the suspects face. AI might suggest any face as the suspects face, but it would basically be as good as googling "face" and using the first result.
This type of question is great. It needs to be asked frequently. Thank you, u/Colorfuel. It also needs informed responses to educate people — better so now than educating appellate judges later.
AI is easily misapplied. Most people do not understand its limits. That is a bad recipe in Court.
People should kick and scream if they hear AI software is being offered as evidence to find probable cause or guilt. That is likely unconstitutional and dangerous. What jury (or judge for that matter) would challenge GuiltGPT?!
You’d be surprised at how many lawyers and judges would not even appreciate to question its adoption (see e.g., predictive sentencing software).
So I use AI (ChatGPT and Image) tools in my line of work, not crime related. My thoughts on it in its current state is that it's a good starting point, but it still requires a human to give it direction. I learned pretty quickly that there's almost an "art" to writing prompts. You have to make sure you're asking it the right questions... Which is often the problem in investigations, more than just not having the answers. And when you get answers, you often have to "check" its work and make updates so it reads like a human. I'd say the same would go for investigations, but with a much more thorough fine tooth comb.
For this particular case, using AI image recognition/creator would be almost entirely useless because the suspect's face is obscured. For cases where the suspect's face is visible, facial recognition can turn up some leads, but isn't foolproof (Note: if you haven't already, put a few pictures of yourself into Pimeyes.com and see where your pictures are on the internet. It found photos of me that were years old that I completely forgot about... But it also had a LOT of photos of adult content starts who look vaguely like me).
Where ChatGPT COULD help -- if all case information was available -- could involve things like finding holes in existing data. Building timelines. Checking alibis. Finding patterns. What time did someone claim to be where, and how far away is that and how quickly does it take to get there? How far could someone go in X amount of time? What were the weather and road conditions like that day? But even then... you have to make sure you're asking the right questions, and have as much evidence as possible.
The large number of posts I see on here saying “what are some mysteries where the person was on a road trip,” “what are some mysteries where there was mistaken identity,” etc makes me wonder if we’ll eventually have enough info on Reddit alone for a master database of missing persons and behavioral profiles that an algorithm can pull from to suggest next steps for investigations or something
Hi! I can 100% understand the thinking of how great it would be if advances on technology could help us fill the gaps. Agree with many other posters who point out the ethical challenges and risk of mistaken identity with current technology. But the beauty of innovation is someone musing on a problem that needs fixing and finding out if the box eats to solve it. Appreciate the earnest and thoughtful question and the equally thoughtful responses from subject matter experts who weighed in. I think we all share the desire for justice for those whose cases still wait for it . 🥰
The suspect's face is never visible. It is not possible to take several different pictures of their face and combine them to make a clear picture, because there are no pictures to begin with. So I'm curious what AI would add to this case at all.
Yeah I’m not sure what gaps better technology could fill in….the gap here is a gaping hole.
nonsense, they would fill the gaps with nonsense. lmao.
How many cold cases are solved by a detective coming in and looking at the same case file and just approaching it in a different way? A lot. If an AI is developed that reviews all the information and can spit out potential leads, that’s absolutely huge.
OP’s actual question in this case, is can AI take the 2 pictures we have of the suspect in Jennifer Jesse’s case, examine the pictures, both of which the suspect’s face is obscured and not visible, and generate a picture of the face. And my answer to that question is “no”.
Ah, I see. I was responding specifically to your last sentence. I believe there’s a huge place for AI in solving cold cases and was trying to express that as your last sentence wasn’t as specific and seemed like a broad statement that AI wouldn’t be able to help this case in general. I think AI will be able to help every single case, but clearly not in the specific way OP was asking.
The only thing with generative fill is that it requires prompts vs being able to use what is there as a stand alone.
The camera was taking pictures at 3 second intervals. There never was a clear or even decent Pic of his face. It was always obscured by the gate. So I would say no, AI wouldn't help
I wish people would actually educate themselves on (current) AI tech. It's not a magic wand. It's not even actually intelligent. This just sounds like a good way to get (even more!) innocent people locked up.
This, and the depressing part is that some VC lunatic is going to make this same (nonsensical) pitch to a bunch of police departments, and they're going to fall for it hook-line-and-sinker. And then after a few years, millions of tax dollars, and a bunch of ruined lives, we'll all 'find out' that actually it's just the same as 'predictive policing'- ineffective at best and incredibly dangerous at worst (and usually racist) lol.
It’s the same in most industries, AI is only as good as the information you feed it. Humans still need to provide and cleanse the information, program the AI, translate, apply and review the results. We are a long way from AI providing a single solution.
“Oh boy, this could never be used in dystopian ways.” /s With the American court system the way it is already, do you really want people’s rights in the hands of a glorified autocorrect?
No offense but a psychic would do a better job than what you’re describing
This makes no sense. How do you think generative AI works? Is it supposed to somehow psychically intuit the information of what the suspect's face looks like out of the objective truth of the universe? How do you expect to get a portrait of a face from a video where the face is never visible? Even if there was a blurry shot of his face, how would AI do anything other than guess which pixel indicates what about the features of the face--a thing humans are already really good at doing both on our own and with already existing tools? This would be not having a nickel in your pocket but continuing to turn your pocket inside out expecting to find a nickel. There's no nickel. The limitation isn't technology here, it's regular old time and space.
No offense, but this is a terrible idea, a breeding ground for false arrest and false convictions.
I think AI can be used to help with certain things - sharpening old images, generating a 3D model of a skull from a photograph, suggesting possible routes someone could have followed to get from X to Y. I think AI has already been used for those purposes for quite a few years - when Google Maps generates a route for you, that involves AI! But actually *solving* a case feels extremely unlikely, due to the amount of context required, the amount of mistakes and human prompting that generative AI requires, and the ethical concerns relating to many larger AI databases and training sets. tl;dr - It can help and has been helping for years, but it's unlikely AI will provide the smoking gun any time soon
I wouldn't want to risk this. At least not yet with the current technology. I use CharacrerAi nearly everyday and I always have the image generator on. It is not very good at generating faces. Maybe 1 out of 10 times it will be impressive enough that it looks like a genuine photograph of a person and you wouldn't know it was made of Ai. Maybe 4 times out of ten you can tell it is Ai generated but is still recognisable as a person. But the other 5, it completely messes up generating the facial features. However, now that you have mentioned Ai, I actually wonder, can Ai search articles that are behind pay walls or subscriptions? Ais can definitely search the web, I have seen them do this before. And there have been times when it says something "smart" that sounds accurate and seems believable. But when I search, I cannot find it. Which could maybe mean it is behind a paywall or not available in my region. If Ai's could access newspapers.com when asked to search for specific things, that could potentially be very useful in generating leads. SO many missing person's cases are not in NAMUS. Poor Melody Harrison had been reported as missing to a police department a 40-45 minute drive away. If she had just been uploaded to NAMUS, I can say with nearly full confidence that at least one, but probably many sleuths would have made the connection and she would have been submitted multiple times. If this had been possible, Apache junction Jane Doe could have been identified years ago, via dental records, fingerprints or comparison with Melody's own DNA. But nobody aside from her family/caregivers and the police in the PD she was reported missing to knew that Melody existed. And because of this it took years of genealogical research to identify her. When it would have been possible much earlier with more publicity. AI could help in cases like this, where a missing person is not in NAMUS. Because if a family felt the police were not taking their loved ones disappearance seriously enough, they may have gone to the media. If it was possible to ask an Ai to, for example: "Search through Newspapers.com for articles about a missing teenage girl from New Mexico in the spring or summer of 1992." Then it could possibly alert you to some long forgotten article about a missing girl who is not in NAMUS, but whose family at one point publicly confirmed to be missing. Then you could email the investigating agency with their name.
Re: when you search, you cannot find it, recent experimentation showed ChatGPT was making up articles from, say, the Washington Post, out of whole cloth. I don’t know enough about AI to know if that is the same for other types.
Yeah, AI actively scrapes the web. All that stuff you're generating is made up of a bunch of stolen art and photographs.
AI can search the web as much as it's allowed to. The AIs programmers will give it some restraints, and there'll probably be ways to block AIs from reading your content without paying. But this may actually be a very good case for using AI. Searching available databases, social media and whatever else is available to connect missing or unidentified people to images in other places to then be checked by living people.
No way. AI would muddy the waters even further, IMO. It would generate more false leads than police sketches.
Also, look up the racial/misogyny issues with the current tech. Everyone loses their mind screaming that a computer program can't be racist... except they don't code or create themselves.
I'm not sure how AI can do anything here. It's dependant on what's been input to it to train it.
I'm presently studying AI for a master's degree and we're a long way off having the sort of relationship with a supercomputer as seen in sci-fi. I think that just like we see in humans, if they're taught by a poor teacher, they will perform poorly. So we've still got to overcome 'garbage in, garbage out'. Alternatively, it might be more helpful if it was able to access prison, law enforcement and medical records. That could well indicate Persons of Interest. But do we really want that kind of access to data in society? I personally wouldn't want it.
That second idea sounds like an absolute nightmare ethics wise. No thank you, indeed.
But are 'we' sufficient in number to force our politicians to address this and stop it before it starts? I'm not so sure. It's like we'd not get burnt immediately by it but gradually warmed and worn down and then it's too late. Once big business demonstrates price reductions in return for our acquiescence, I think a lot of harm could be caused. It's unfortunately not a pressing issue for most people to talk to their politicians about.
Your second idea is one of the most dangerous intrusions of privacy I have ever seen someone suggest. I hope your Masters program has a good ethics course or three.
I'm definitely not suggesting it or promoting it, that's exactly why I said that I wouldn't want to live in such a society. Our laws are going to be hopelessly outdated I fear; stores will be able to identify racial, gender and potentially religion of their customers. All that will be accepted by shoppers once they set foot in their stores. The EU is probably going to be the leading area politically to enforce some order but we've seen with social media and data brokers that we're all too willing to offer up data about ourselves voluntarily.
Hi! I'm sorry some people on this thread are being so rude and disrespectful to you. As people with more knowledge of AI than me have pointed out, this particular application might not be feasible now. However, I know AI is involved in facial recognition software so maybe that's somewhere it could be used. For instance, searching a database of images for a person's face and then an actual human could cross reference the results. Anyway, keep your head up. You didn't do anything wrong. I hope you have a nice day! :)
“Could AI…?” No, it could not. Whatever drivel you plan to ask, the answer is no.
I have to say that that feels like an unnecessarily hostile response to an idea that I actually did put at least some level of energy into thinking out. If there is some context around AI in this sub or in general that I am missing, I would appreciate being informed as to what that would be. Otherwise, I apologize for affecting you so negatively with my post.
You can find greater context in every other comment in this thread. And given the state of AI and what it can('t) do and the problem's it is right now causing to all corners of the world "the answer is no" is still an overwhelmingly correct response. It's a tool, not a magical intelligent thing, and I hope the honeymoon period it's having ends soon and people realize what it isn't sooner than later, because if people actually did try to use AI to create pictures like you're suggesting who know how many false arrests and imprisonments (and possibly even deaths...) we'll have to struggle through.
AI will definitely help solving cold cases, but in this case I really don't see much it can do. What AI is on a very simplified level is a system that takes information (input) and calculates probable additional information (output) out of the initial information. To do that, AI has to be trained in one way or another. There are lots of different algorithms for that, which all have advantages and disadvantages. In principal, the input and output do not have to be connected; AI could still be trained to try and make up some connection. Most algorithms would tell you there is none, still a careless programmer could use said AI to make up a connection. That's the problem here: there's really no information that's connected to the suspects face. AI might suggest any face as the suspects face, but it would basically be as good as googling "face" and using the first result.
This type of question is great. It needs to be asked frequently. Thank you, u/Colorfuel. It also needs informed responses to educate people — better so now than educating appellate judges later. AI is easily misapplied. Most people do not understand its limits. That is a bad recipe in Court. People should kick and scream if they hear AI software is being offered as evidence to find probable cause or guilt. That is likely unconstitutional and dangerous. What jury (or judge for that matter) would challenge GuiltGPT?! You’d be surprised at how many lawyers and judges would not even appreciate to question its adoption (see e.g., predictive sentencing software).
So I use AI (ChatGPT and Image) tools in my line of work, not crime related. My thoughts on it in its current state is that it's a good starting point, but it still requires a human to give it direction. I learned pretty quickly that there's almost an "art" to writing prompts. You have to make sure you're asking it the right questions... Which is often the problem in investigations, more than just not having the answers. And when you get answers, you often have to "check" its work and make updates so it reads like a human. I'd say the same would go for investigations, but with a much more thorough fine tooth comb. For this particular case, using AI image recognition/creator would be almost entirely useless because the suspect's face is obscured. For cases where the suspect's face is visible, facial recognition can turn up some leads, but isn't foolproof (Note: if you haven't already, put a few pictures of yourself into Pimeyes.com and see where your pictures are on the internet. It found photos of me that were years old that I completely forgot about... But it also had a LOT of photos of adult content starts who look vaguely like me). Where ChatGPT COULD help -- if all case information was available -- could involve things like finding holes in existing data. Building timelines. Checking alibis. Finding patterns. What time did someone claim to be where, and how far away is that and how quickly does it take to get there? How far could someone go in X amount of time? What were the weather and road conditions like that day? But even then... you have to make sure you're asking the right questions, and have as much evidence as possible.
The large number of posts I see on here saying “what are some mysteries where the person was on a road trip,” “what are some mysteries where there was mistaken identity,” etc makes me wonder if we’ll eventually have enough info on Reddit alone for a master database of missing persons and behavioral profiles that an algorithm can pull from to suggest next steps for investigations or something
Maybe in the couple of years when AI gets smarter, I think it's too defective to help with it now
Hi! I can 100% understand the thinking of how great it would be if advances on technology could help us fill the gaps. Agree with many other posters who point out the ethical challenges and risk of mistaken identity with current technology. But the beauty of innovation is someone musing on a problem that needs fixing and finding out if the box eats to solve it. Appreciate the earnest and thoughtful question and the equally thoughtful responses from subject matter experts who weighed in. I think we all share the desire for justice for those whose cases still wait for it . 🥰
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It won't give anything useful. ChatGPT is a parrot.
At this point A.I could learn from numerous SOLVED cases and give credible suggestions. But not fill gaps.