To identify the perpetrators of the looting that occurred during the October 17 mobilisation day, the police rely on an artificial intelligence tool called System V. According to Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, about 3,000 shops were attacked across France, and the affected merchants are among the main victims.
- Police use the AI tool System V to identify the looters of October 17.
- The tool searches thousands of hours of video through plain-language queries and tracks people and license plates.
- Facial recognition is prohibited in France, but Gérald Darmanin says images will be compared with the TAJ police database.
- Darmanin also wants the looting reclassified as organized crime.
While support crowdfunding campaigns multiply online to help the affected professionals, authorities are focusing their efforts on locating the perpetrators. Judicial police investigators and scientific police technicians were dispatched to the sites the day after the attacks. They carried out fingerprint and DNA collection, questioned witnesses and victims, and retrieved recordings from surveillance cameras of the looted stores and nearby areas.
A tool that reduces video analysis time
The work promises to be lengthy. The looters were mostly hooded and dressed in black to conceal their identity, and analysing the thousands of hours of video collected would normally take weeks, if not months. It is in this context that investigators are using System V, a tool developed by the French startup XXII, then acquired by Orasio in June.
The operation relies on a query written in plain language, a process comparable to that of a conversational assistant. Florian Fournier, president and co‑founder of Orasio, gives the following example: “You simply make a query as you would in ChatGPT, for instance write ‘I am looking for an individual who wore a black hood, a green Adidas backpack and white Nike shoes’.” A person identified through this search can then be found in all other videos in which they appear. The software also allows tracking a vehicle by its license plate.
Facial recognition and police databases
The software does not allow facial recognition, a technique prohibited in France, except in exceptional cases governed by the AI Act, the European regulation on artificial intelligence, and by Article 9 of the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation. The Keeper of the Seals, Gérald Darmanin, nevertheless stated that the images would be compared to the police database of Criminal Record Checks (TAJ). He also wants the looters’ acts to be reclassified as organized crime.
These announcements come amid a climate of high tension. Recall that the government is preparing to block social networks ahead of the “Act III” of the protests, scheduled for October 31.
