Amazon provides facial recognition for new platform to locate missing children

The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) has announced the launch of a new global platform, dubbed GMCNgine, to apply biometrics with artificial intelligence and digital advertising technology to help locate missing and abducted children.

The platform is a result of collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is providing face biometrics from Amazon Rekognition, along with FIA, Web-IQ, First Factory, and Biometrica, which are each providing critical services, according to the announcement. Geo-targeting and dynamic ad insertion are used to place missing children alerts where and when they will be most effective, while machine learning and AI models constantly scan images from the dark and main web for matches to photos of missing children to make it easier to find new leads. FIA is delivering the technology that have been used to deliver more than 1 billion AMBER alerts to 180 million internet devices in the U.S.

“The GMCNgine sparks global change in missing child investigations,” said Maura Harty, President & Chief Executive Officer, ICMEC. “This is an invaluable tool for law enforcement and NGOs around the world.”

The 33 law enforcement and NGO groups that make up ICMEC’s GMCN have populated the GMCNgine system with case data from 29 countries.

“We couldn’t be prouder to collaborate with ICMEC and its partner organizations on this important work,” said Teresa Carlson, Vice President, AWS Worldwide Public Sector. “ICMEC’s commitment to building a safer world for children is one of the most important issues of our time. Our hope is that collaborative efforts like this one will help provide mission-critical resources and support to those on the front lines, giving them faster access to better tools to protect children everywhere.”

While biometrics can be used to locate and identify vulnerable individuals, a plan by the South Korean government to collect children’s fingerprints for a national database faced heavy criticism earlier this year.

Article Topics

Amazon  |  Amazon Rekognition  |  Amazon Web Services (AWS)  |  Biometrica  |  biometrics  |  child abduction  |  facial recognition