Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

news.sky.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 210 posts

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#91

Post by bouncycastle »

pseudo0 wrote: post #72
jyounker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When DNA matching was introduced, we discovered that at minimum 10% of people on death row were innocent. Death row cases are among the most litigated and examined cases. So, 10% is a reasonable floor, and we're already in double digits.

That stat is off by a couple orders of magnitude. The total number of death penalty convictions overturned by DNA evidence is 29 (as of 2025). There are a couple thousand death row inmates right now, and the denominator here is all the people who were on death row in the last 20+ years. That's a rate of significantly https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/first-death-row-exoneration-inv...

it doesn't matter if it's 29 or 2900. Even 1 is wrong.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#92

Post by jshier »

Jensson wrote: post #85
constableclaude wrote: post #76

The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it. Since “enhancing” is letting AI fill in the gaps it would be using AI to “create evidence”. Regardless of what they did, tampering with evidence is completely unac…

> what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it Doesn't iphones do this by default? The camera isn't actually that sharp, instead it fills in the details so it looks sharp, and sometimes it adds things that were never there. Can easily see it adding a gun in a blurry photo of someone. So almost…

iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera. There were Android phones doing this (famously I think it was Samsung where it would replace images of the moon with a different image of the moon), and the Photos app has AI manipulation features. And most of the time, Apple's noise removal algorithm actually removes detail from images, most notably making text and straight lines wobbly.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#93

Post by inigyou »

constableclaude wrote: post #76

The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it. Since “enhancing” is letting AI fill in the gaps it would be using AI to “create evidence”. Regardless of what they did, tampering with evidence is completely unac…

What would the defense do with fabricated evidence? Say that evidence is fabricated? Okay, the prosecution will say it's not fabricated, now what?

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#94

Post by Jensson »

godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #82
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A burden of proof is associated with an individual claim. There’s no “burden of proof in the other direction” - what you’ve actually done is created a second burden of proof and also - worse - attempted to distract from the original point. It is disingenuous to weasel out of proving one claim by making another, or saying “look over here” Also, outrageous claims in opposite directions can both be bullshit.

On what basis is it an outrageous claim? You think the number is closer to 0? That sounds like a more outrageous claim to me.

That is like claiming that double digit percentage of software bugs and vulnerabilities were intentionally put there by malicious software engineers. Its outrageous to claim its that high.

Even single digit percent is hard to believe, but its possible, but double digits you are talking China or Russia levels of state corruption and even there I doubt its that high.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#95

Post by [deleted] »

testing22321 wrote: post #29
bobthepanda wrote: post #3

i do wonder, that in the age where we have image and video creation out of the bag, whether or not this will result in whole classes of evidence becoming completely unreliable.

I’m still shocked we have not seen an extremely convincing AI video of a famous person or world leader announcing something huge like UBI or WW3 or aliens. Surely it’s just a matter of time.

[deleted]

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#96

Post by inigyou »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #73
rvnx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be the exact opposite here ? The burden of proof is the other way around. The big claim is here: the state has grandiose claims that the overwhelming majority is fair, but there is no proof of it. Therefore the state should prove that more than 90% of the cases are legitimate, fair, not coerced, and not motivated by the pressure to interrupt the proceedings. 97% of people choose plea deals or out-of-cour…

That is true--the checks and balances the founding fathers fought so hard for were thrown out the window with overlegislation and expansion of prosecutorial discretion in 20th century. To make a convincing argument that "double digits" of cases involve fabricated evidence, you still need to explain why prosecutors would engage in fraud at this massive scale. Just laziness? Collecting scalps? The incentives run that w…

They get rewarded based on winning cases?

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#97

Post by Jensson »

jshier wrote: post #92
Jensson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it Doesn't iphones do this by default? The camera isn't actually that sharp, instead it fills in the details so it looks sharp, and sometimes it adds things that were never there. Can easily see it adding a gun in a blurry photo of someone. So almost…

iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera. There were Android phones doing this (famously I think it was Samsung where it would replace images of the moon with a different image of the moon), and the Photos app has AI manipulation features. And most of the time, Apple's noise removal algorithm actually removes detail from images, most notably making text and straight lines wobbly.

> iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera

This is AI. Its not generative AI if that is what you mean, but it is AI altering the image and adding things that wasn't there, usually its fine sometimes it fails horribly and make the picture totally different.

https://x.com/mitchcohen/status/1476351601862483968

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#98

Post by cwmoore »

xorcist wrote: post #90
constableclaude wrote: post #76

The headline evokes ideas of creating a video of a suspect perpetrating the crime but what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it. Since “enhancing” is letting AI fill in the gaps it would be using AI to “create evidence”. Regardless of what they did, tampering with evidence is completely unac…

That is a lot of words just to say "fabricating evidence".

Their word is evidence and their employer is the prosecution. This is the fabric of prosperity.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#99

Post by jasonfarnon »

inigyou wrote: post #96
jasonfarnon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true--the checks and balances the founding fathers fought so hard for were thrown out the window with overlegislation and expansion of prosecutorial discretion in 20th century. To make a convincing argument that "double digits" of cases involve fabricated evidence, you still need to explain why prosecutors would engage in fraud at this massive scale. Just laziness? Collecting scalps? The incentives run that w…

They get rewarded based on winning cases?

Yeah, again, there are some incentives to fabricate evidence like career advancement. Now why should those, on a mass scale, outweigh disincentives like getting caught in an adversarial process and (presumably) some qualm about regularly convicting innocents and regularly letting guilty parties run free in communities. Easy to argue in particular cases but I haven't heard the basis for a trend.

Re: Police officer investigated for using AI to 'create evidence' in multiple cases

#100

Post by epgui »

jshier wrote: post #92
Jensson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I think is much more likely is the police officer used AI to enhance an image in a way that they considered innocuous, e.g: a photo was blurry so they “enhanced” it Doesn't iphones do this by default? The camera isn't actually that sharp, instead it fills in the details so it looks sharp, and sometimes it adds things that were never there. Can easily see it adding a gun in a blurry photo of someone. So almost…

iPhones, no, there's no AI replacement or synthesis of objects from the camera. There were Android phones doing this (famously I think it was Samsung where it would replace images of the moon with a different image of the moon), and the Photos app has AI manipulation features. And most of the time, Apple's noise removal algorithm actually removes detail from images, most notably making text and straight lines wobbly.

Yes, iphones do process images using AI.
Post reply on HN