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Amazon will have to let shareholders vote on proposals to limit sales of its controversial facial recognition product, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a letter to the company this week.
Activist shareholders have pushed proposals that, if approved, would force Amazon to check its recognition tool for potential civil rights issues and stop selling it to government agencies until a review is completed. civil rights be completed.
Open MIC, a group that helped organize shareholder votes, announced that the SEC had made the final decision after Amazon asked the agency to let the company use a process to prevent proposals. to be put to a vote. The SEC announced in a letter sent late last month that the company did not meet the standards applicable to this process. Although Amazon appealed the decision, the agency made the decision in another letter yesterday.
Open MIC said the proposals would be reviewed at the company's annual meeting of shareholders, which has not yet been scheduled. Although the proposals may still be a long way to go, they have put more public pressure on Amazon's sales of this tool, used by some police services in the United States. CEO Jeff Bezos has defended himself from working with the US government, but some have expressed concerns about possible bias in recognition.
Amazon has challenged these characterizations. The company declined to comment.
The recognition has been criticized by both Amazon and some experts in artificial intelligence. Yesterday, a group of prominent researchers asked the company to end sales of the facial recognition tool by the government, which they described as "defective."
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