AI Cameras Mistakenly Issued 3,800 Parking Tickets

New York City has already issued refunds and reversed the citations.

Photo by: New York City MTA

By: Anthony Alaniz

Dec 3, 2024 at 1:06pm ET

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New York City is a busy place, with too many cars and too few places to park them. That makes parking enforcement vital to the city. The local government took a big step to up its enforcement capabilities earlier this year when it began installing new AI-powered cameras on some of its buses. However, there have been issues. AI cameras used on a few certain routes incorrectly issued thousands of parking tickets to cars supposedly blocking the bus lanes.

According to NBC New York, the cameras mistakenly ticketed around 3,800 cars. Of those, nearly 900 were legally parked, with many receiving photos of their innocence even though a human reviews each citation.

Photo by: New York City MTA

The city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) told the news outlet the cameras were not properly programmed for the routes they monitored, misidentifying parked cars on one route and issuing citations on another where full enforcement hadn’t yet begun.

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The city has already refunded those who’d paid, reversed the citations, and fixed the software issue that caused the mistaken citations in the first place. The MTA announced earlier this year that it would have the AI cameras in over 1,020 buses by the end of 2024, and it has plans to install them on 1,000 more.

Cameras are everywhere today, and the software analyzing the endless stream of video pouring through their lenses is getting better at understanding what it sees. Your phone’s camera app can identify your cat, spouse, and the Eiffel Tower, and it’s now being used to catch parking violations, racking up millions for the city’s coffers while keeping the buses running on time.