{"id":6499,"date":"2026-09-04T06:57:55","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=6499"},"modified":"2026-09-04T06:57:55","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T06:57:55","slug":"flock-ai-search-user-interface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=6499","title":{"rendered":"This Is Flock\u2019s AI Search Tool for Cops"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Flock tells WIRED that officers cannot run searches using prohibited attributes, including religion and nationality, and that an attempt to search prohibited terms \u201cwill be blocked.\u201d Asked what circumstances produce a warning in those two categories instead, the company did not say.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">When a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/license-plate-readers-political-signs-bumper-stickers\/\" class=\"text link\">T-shirt or a bumper sticker<\/a> draws a warning because the text includes speech with \u201cconstitutional protections,\u201d officers are told the search will be logged and that administrators will be notified. Officers then have to tick an acknowledgment box and leave a comment before they\u2019re free to click Continue With Search Anyway.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Flock says the warning leaves room for legitimate work, offering as an example a victim who describes a suspect in a biker-gang jacket bearing \u201ca certain gang logo or emblem containing a flag or other insignia.\u201d An officer who proceeds is reported to an administrator at their own department for review.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Kate Ruane, who directs the Center for Democracy and Technology&#8217;s free expression project, has spent years studying how automated moderation systems work. Political, social, and cultural expression is \u201can incredibly amorphous category,\u201d she says, and one reason an officer\u2019s search might contain language including it is to see who attended a protest. <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2025\/11\/how-cops-are-using-flock-safetys-alpr-network-surveil-protesters-and-activists\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2025\/11\/how-cops-are-using-flock-safetys-alpr-network-surveil-protesters-and-activists&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/deeplinks\/2025\/11\/how-cops-are-using-flock-safetys-alpr-network-surveil-protesters-and-activists\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">That&#8217;s already happened<\/a>. The category worries Flock enough that the system returns a warning, she points out, \u201cbut you can still get the results if you just click through.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cNo content moderation done at scale is necessarily accurate,\u201d she says. Analysis of moving video, she says, is harder still, and it goes wrong more often.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The categories that do get blocked can be worked around, Ruane says. The system blocks searches based on religion but not clothing, meaning that in practice an officer could get around the block by searching for the distinctive dress worn by some members of a particular faith. \u201cLots of people are having their images returned in response to these types of queries that would probably be upset if they knew about it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">In a search last year, an officer in California typed \u201cAmerican flag.\u201d The search drew a block when aimed at a person, then ran across 11,000 cameras when aimed at vehicles instead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">A warning stops only those officers not already determined to run the search, says Deepak Kumar, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at UC San Diego. Kumar, who studies trust and safety systems, points to interfaces built to address online harassment, where motivated users sometimes did more harm after being warned, and to browser alerts meant to steer people away from malicious websites, where the effect depends on how warnings are presented.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cThis kind of logging can be useful administratively, to see which officers or end users bypass warnings often, but that value depends entirely on whether anyone administrates it,\u201d Kumar says. \u201cIt functions less as a deterrent and more as a record.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Reviewing search terms before a query runs will inevitably catch many attempts at misuse, but in isolation, such safeguards are known to fail without equal scrutiny of what the model sends back. \u201cBest practice examines both inputs and outputs,\u201d Kumar says, \u201cwhich is why so many AI safety efforts now check both to prevent models from generating harmful outputs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/flock-ai-search-user-interface\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flock tells WIRED that officers cannot run searches using prohibited attributes, including religion and nationality, and that an attempt to search prohibited terms \u201cwill be blocked.\u201d Asked what circumstances produce a warning in those two categories instead, the company did not say. When a T-shirt or a bumper sticker draws a warning because the text [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[83,114,1113,181,177,178],"class_list":["post-6499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cameras","tag-flock","tag-police","tag-privacy","tag-surveillance"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>This Is Flock\u2019s AI Search Tool for Cops - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"WIRED rebuilt Flock\u2019s latest search tool from code the company sends to a police officer\u2019s browser. Its AI can keep watch across multiple cameras for anyone fitting a written description.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=6499\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Is Flock\u2019s AI Search Tool for Cops - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WIRED rebuilt Flock\u2019s latest search tool from code the company sends to a police officer\u2019s browser. 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