Created by: Mengjia Li, Xin Yan, Lu Li, Jinhao Huang, Yanfei Li
Overview: This project is a short mockumentary video that critically examines the social risks of AI policing and facial recognition technology. Inspired by the real case of a pregnant Black woman wrongly arrested after being misidentified by a facial recognition algorithm, it explores how algorithms construct and reinforce existing racial hierarchies and epistemic injustice. The narrative follows journalist Helly as she investigates the case of Polly Wood, an eight-month pregnant Black woman accused of robbery by an AI criminal investigation system, and gradually uncovers how the system’s reliance on biased historical data and its failure to account for bodily context led to a wrongful arrest. The project draws on concepts including algorithmic bias, algorithmic exclusion, the digital gaze, and data justice to challenge the myth of technological neutrality, arguing that AI errors in policing are not simply technical failures but the result of biased data, feedback loops, and proxy variables working together.
Created with: DeepSeek, Doubao, Jimeng
Concept
Poster description: The poster centres on an AI-generated image of a handcuffed pregnant Black woman surrounded by facial recognition overlays, match scores, and CCTV-style interface elements, with a white female journalist and surveillance footage in the background. Its text asks who defines justice when algorithms define evidence, arguing that AI policing systems built on racially skewed historical data turn structural bias into automated authority and exclude those, like pregnant Black women, who fall outside their narrow classificatory logic.