A Tennessee grandmother spent five months in jail after AI facial recognition wrongly placed her at a crime in a state she had never visited

Angela Lipps, a 50-year-old grandmother from Tennessee, spent five months in jail after an AI facial recognition system wrongly identified her as a suspect in a bank fraud case in North Dakota, a state she had never visited. She was arrested at her Tennessee home by US Marshals in July last year, taken as a fugitive without knowing there was a warrant for her arrest from Fargo, North Dakota.

According to The Sun U.S., she said, “I’ve never been to North Dakota, I don’t know anyone from North Dakota.” Lipps spent nearly four months in a Tennessee jail without bail before being extradited to North Dakota, where she was held even longer. She described the ordeal, saying, “It was so scary. I can still see it in my head, over and over again.” She also noted that the flight to North Dakota was “the first time I had ever been on an aeroplane.”

The technology behind her wrongful arrest was Clearview AI, a system that scans billions of images from the internet and social media to identify suspects from surveillance footage. The West Fargo Police Department confirmed they used Clearview AI and said it “identified a potential suspect with similar features to Angela Lipps.” Lipps, however, was nowhere near the crime scene.

AI facial recognition used as a shortcut led to an innocent woman losing everything

Her lawyer, Jay Greenwood, produced bank records showing Lipps was in Tennessee the entire time the crimes were committed. The records showed her depositing Social Security checks, buying food, and ordering takeaways. Greenwood explained, “Around the same time she’s depositing Social Security checks… she is buying cigarettes at a gas station, around the same time, she is buying a pizza, she is using a cash app to buy an Uber Eats.”

Lipps also claimed police never spoke with her until she had already spent more than five months behind bars. Her attorney criticized the approach, saying, “The investigation and arrest of Angela relied solely on facial recognition. If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper.”

The case against Lipps collapsed in December, and she was released just days after her first police interview. When released, she was left in freezing conditions with no coat and no help getting home. “I had my summer clothes on, no coat, it was so cold outside, snow on the ground, scared, I wanted out but I didn’t know what I was going to do, how I was going to get home,” she said.

While jailed, Lipps lost her home, her car, and her dog. She relied on donations and help from her lawyers to return to Tennessee. A GoFundMe campaign has since raised over $75,000 to help her rebuild her life. Lipps said, “I’m just glad it’s over. I’ll never go back to North Dakota.” Tennessee has seen its share of surprising and troubling stories lately, including a Tennessee man exposing an alleged U-Haul scam after an unexpected $198 charge.

Local police later admitted to “a few errors.” Former Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski revealed that the AI system had been purchased without senior approval, stating, “We would not have allowed that to be used, and it has since been prohibited.” Zibolski also noted that his department wrongly assumed their partner agency, West Fargo Police, had sent surveillance photos along with the AI report.

According to CNN, Fargo Police say they will no longer use information from West Fargo’s AI system and will instead work with certified state and federal authorities. All future facial recognition results will be reviewed monthly by the Investigations Division. Despite these admissions, no apology has been made to Lipps, with the chief citing the ongoing fraud investigation.

Lipps’ legal team said they saw “no investigation by officers to determine whether she traveled to or was in North Dakota at the time of the bank thefts,” adding that “an officer used AI facial recognition as a shortcut for basic investigation, resulting in an innocent woman being detained and transported halfway across the country.”

It is not uncommon for a single mistake turning victory into a nightmare to change everything in an instant, and Lipps’ case is a stark real-life example of that. Her lawyers are currently looking into civil rights claims, though no lawsuit has been filed yet. The broader fraud case remains under investigation.