A federal judge in Kentucky has refused to dismiss a lawsuit against a police detective accused of relying solely on facial recognition technology to identify a check fraud suspect, a match that led to the arrest and jailing of the wrong man.
U.S. District Judge S. Chad Meredith ruled on Friday that constitutional protections forbid arrests “based on nothing more than an uncorroborated conclusion by AI that the individual in question has committed a crime,” Reuters reported. The judge also found that the detective, who works for the Florence Police Department, does not have qualified immunity that would automatically shield him from liability at this stage.
The plaintiff, Alain Vizcay Osorio, was arrested in 2024 on suspicion of check fraud. Prosecutors dropped the charges last year after he showed he was not at the bank when the allegedly fraudulent check was presented. He is suing for false arrest and malicious prosecution.
The complaint says Florence Police Department policy treats facial recognition only as a source of investigative leads and does not allow it to establish a suspect’s identity on its own. It alleges that the detective, Ryan Kilmer, “failed to completely and adequately investigate or verify the identity” of Osorio. Lawmakers in New Jersey are weighing a comparable rule, with a committee there advancing a bill limiting the use of face matches in arrest warrants.
Kilmer has denied wrongdoing and argued that Osorio had not shown the alleged misconduct violated clearly established law. Meredith wrote that there was “good reason” to believe a warrant would not have been issued if the detective had “painted a full picture of how he arrived at the conclusion that Osorio was the individual who attempted to cash the fraudulent check.”
The decision joins a growing number of cases testing how the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to evidence generated by AI. The city of Fargo, North Dakota, is being sued over an arrest linked to a facial recognition match.
Lawyers for both sides had no immediate comment. The case is Osorio v. Kilmer, No. 2:26-cv-00004, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.
Sources: Reuters
–
By the ID Tech Editorial Team
