NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) -- The MTA is using artificial intelligence to keep tabs on farebeaters in the subway, officials said Thursday.
The transit agency confirmed a report in NBC News that it has been quietly rolling out AI software to monitor riders who skip the fare.
In 2022 alone, people who jumped turnstiles and snuck in through emergency exit gates cost the agency an eye-popping $690 million.
The surveillance system is currently being used as a "counting tool" to calculate how much money is being lost to fare evasion, MTA communications director Tim Minton told NBC News.
"The objective is to determine how many people are evading the fare and how are they doing it," Minton said.
While the AI doesn’t currently flag the NYPD, an MTA spokesperson wouldn't say if the policy could change in the future, and a police spokesperson declined comment for the report.
The AI system was first tested in 2020 and then rolled out in 2021. As of May 2023, it was being used at seven stations across the system with plans to expand it to two dozen more stations by the end of the year, according to an MTA contract obtained by NBC News and an MTA report on fare evasion.
The system is sure to draw the ire of privacy advocates who've decried a city increasingly surveilled by thousands of cameras, license plate readers and other technology.
As the MTA continues to recover from a pandemic plunge in ridership, the city has attempted to crack down on fare evasion by adding more officers and private security guards at station entrances over the past year.
Police and transit officials have previously pointed to a link between fare evasion and more serious crimes. They've said criminals often skip the fare before going on to commit offenses like robbery.
Tensions have also erupted between paying riders and farebeaters. Just this week, a 68-year-old woman was pepper-sprayed in the face and called a "Karen" after she scolded a group of women for hopping turnstiles at the Lincoln Center station, police said.
Related
Related
Related
