Macy’s faces lawsuit for alleged false arrest due to facial recognition tech
The department store company is under fire for an alleged flaw in its system.
Facial recognition technology, which uses artificial intelligence to determine facial features through images and video, has landed Macy’s (M) - Get Free Report in hot water.
A man named Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr., who was accused and arrested for an alleged violent robbery at a Texas Sunglass Hut store, which is owned by EssilorLuxottica, has filed a lawsuit against its parent company and Macy’s for alleged “false imprisonment” and “negligence” after he was allegedly misidentified as one of the robbers by a facial recognition system they used.
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The lawsuit, which was filed on Jan. 18, alleges that in 2022, two employees at the Sunglass Hut in Houston were held at gunpoint by a criminal who stole thousands of dollars from the store. In the midst of the Houston Police Department’s investigation of the incident, the investigators received a call from an executive at EssilorLuxottica informing them that it was determined that Murphy was one of the alleged robbers.
The lawsuit claims that EssilorLuxottica and Macy’s used AI and facial recognition technology to identify him in security footage of the incident that used “poor low-quality cameras.” The executive also alleged that Murphy also robbed the store on a previous occasion and a Macy’s location in Houston.
Murphy was then arrested and booked at a local Harris County Jail, facing a felony, where he was beaten and raped by criminals, leaving him with “permanent injuries,” according to the lawsuit. Murphy was later released when he and his lawyer provided evidence that he was 2,000 miles away at the time of the robbery. Murphy also claims that he has never even visited the Sunglass Hut location in Houston. 
“Murphy’s story is tragic. But worse than that, it is scary for everyone in this country,” read the lawsuit. “Any one of us could be improperly charged with a crime and jailed based solely on error-prone facial recognition software. The companies that use this kind of software know it has a high rate of false positives, but they still use it to positively identify criminals.”
The lawsuit claims that EssilorLuxottica’s Sunglass Hut uses facial recognition in its stores to “collect customers’ ‘biometric identifiers’ and ‘biometric information’ with its face scanning apps at many of its locations and kiosks.”
The document also states that the biometric data that is collected includes “retina or iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or scans of the hand or face geometry” and that EssilorLuxottica shares the information and profits from it.
In the lawsuit, it states that Murphy is seeking $10 million in damages.
Macy's did not immediately respond to TheStreet's request for comment.
This is not the first time AI has led a company to be placed under fire. In 2023, The Federal Trade Commission banned Rite Aid from using facial recognition technology for five years after it “falsely tagged consumers, particularly women and people of color, as shoplifters.”
The use of facial recognition technology by retailers are on the rise. Large companies such as Walmart, Target and Kroger have been recently adopting AI technology and facial recognition systems to beef up their defense against a rise in theft in their stores. In 2022, it was reported that retail theft cost businesses $112 billion, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.
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