Spots 
In an interview with Fox News Digital, a policing tech expert said officers have wrongfully arrested 16 people after alleged facial recognition mistakes, warning agencies need stronger safeguards as AI becomes more common in investigations.
A Tennessee grandmother has filed a lawsuit against a North Dakota city and police department, accusing officials of wrongfully detaining her for nearly six months after allegedly misusing artificial intelligence facial recognition technology to investigate a bank theft case.
Angela Lipps, now 50, of Elizabethton, Tennessee, said she was caring for her neighbor's four young children when police showed up at the home and arrested her at gunpoint in July 2025.
The complaint, filed Sept. 15, 2026, alleges that authorities relied exclusively on a flawed AI facial recognition match to extradite Lipps from Tennessee to North Dakota, despite her having no connection to the crime or the state.
Experts on police technology told Fox News Digital that the case is among more than a dozen known instances involving alleged police mishandling of facial recognition technology.
"I sat in a county jail in Tennessee for 108 days," Lipps said in a GoFundMe post. "They said I was fugitive from justice. I had no bail. No one interviewed me. I just sat and waited."
Lipps says she spent 108 days in a Tennessee jail before being extradited to North Dakota and eventually cleared. (City of Fargo/GoFundMe)
The bank theft case stemmed from April and May 2025, when an unknown woman allegedly used fake IDs and stolen identities to perpetrate bank fraud in Fargo and West Fargo, North Dakota, according to the lawsuit.
Officials then used a photo from a fraudulent ID card presented by the suspect, rather than surveillance footage, to conduct facial recognition searches using Clearview AI, prosecutors alleged.
While Clearview AI explicitly requires facial recognition matches to be treated as potential leads, Fargo police allegedly characterized the AI match as a positive identification without disclosing that it had not been independently corroborated, according to the complaint.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, a policing tech expert said officers have wrongfully arrested 16 people after alleged facial recognition mistakes, warning agencies need stronger safeguards as AI becomes more common in investigations.