TBH: Tech companies are not much different from how you described cops.

They don't usually bother to learn the tech they are using properly and take all the shortcuts possible. You see this by the current spout of AI startups. Sure, LLMs work pretty good. But most other applications of AI is more like: "LOL, no idea how to solve the problem. I hooked it up to this blackbox, which i don't understand, and trained it to give me the results i want."

Even from a perfect witness (and witnesses are very imprefect) you wouldn’t be able to predict if they have a beard or not. That’s why you always multiple variations of the person when they actually distribute renditions.

I was was wondering what I'd look like with a sick tat on my face. And behold, the DNA and AI winning combination knew it, before I ever got it.

Or what they look like from lifestyle and health factors.

Propublica did an article on that.

https://www.propublica.org/article/understanding-junk-science-forensics-criminal-justice

E.g.

The reliability of bloodstain-pattern analysis has never been definitively proven or quantified, but largely due to the testimony of criminalist Herbert MacDonell, it was steadily admitted in court after court around the country in the 1970s and ’80s. MacDonell spent his career teaching weeklong “institutes” in bloodstain-pattern analysis at police departments around the country, training hundreds of officers who, in turn, trained hundreds more.

...

In 2009, a watershed report commissioned by the National Academy of Sciences cast doubt on the discipline, finding that “the uncertainties associated with bloodstain-pattern analysis are enormous,” and that experts’ opinions were generally “more subjective than scientific.” More than a decade later, few peer-reviewed studies exist, and research that might determine the accuracy of analysts’ findings is close to nonexistent.

Beat me to the punch, I was saying just as much, considering the history of forensic science in general. It won't be long before they're producing bogus "research" to justify it at a new investigative method.

Considering how common rape is in American prisons and how often innocent people are getting locked up, that does not sound unlikely

What's fuckin wild is that the Shadow Realm as a concept doesn't exist in the original Yu-Gi-Oh.

It was a way to make a kid friendly show from a brutal card game.

https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Shadow_Realm#:~:text=The%20Shadow%20Realm%20as%20presented,%E3%81%9B%E3%81%8B%E3%81%84%20Yami%20no%20Sekai).

For example, in Yugi Muto and Arkana's Duel, the loser was to be sent to the Shadow Realm if touched by the "Dark Energy Disc". In the Japanese version, the disks were simply buzz saw blades that would dismember the loser's feet, presumably resulting in death from blood loss or shock.

Garbage is probably how they refer to all of the potential "suspects".

I don't know a lot about DNA, but i know about facial recognition.

Facial recognition is highly inaccurate. It would be easy for people from the same country to "match" at facial recognition despite being totally unrelated.

If "face generation from DNA" is only roughly accurate (ex: nose size or skin tone), then anybody from the same ethnic origin could be a match. Basically, the more you look like the "average person", the more likely you would fit the generated face.

Doesn't it sound a lot like technology-enabled profiling?

I can't follow your reasoning. What if they picked a person at random and it was actually the perpetrator, so it actually worked in a best case scenario?

Dude facial recognition catches the wrong people all the time. It is not as infallible as they make it out to be and this is just adding an entire extra level of mistakes they can make.

Facial recognition tech is bogus and because of its technical limitations, unintentionally(?) racist. (ie the cameras are not designed well to take good photo/video of dark skin, leading to high false positive rates when it comes to dark-skinned people) edit: even further, the cameras are often too small of a resolution for quality matching.

Further, facial reconstruction based on DNA isn't exactly super accurate on its own.

Please don't fall for this bullshit.

The idea that DNA is extremely predictive of phenotype is already kind of... ehh.

There may be some very large feature predictions you can mostly make, but something as specific as recognizing a person? No way in hell. Far too many environmental factors for appearance.

Don't assume it wouldn't be abused since the police have a shit track record. If anything like this we're to be used then strict laws restricting how it can be used need to come first since the police are dumb and can't be trusted to invent new applications of technology. They're the last group that would be leading this.

I am on the same boat. Somewhat similar thing was already done by those forensic sketch people that drew how a person might look like after x years if they had earlier photo. It's not like those sketches meant they are irrefutable proof, just a method to potentially find what you are looking for and then investigate further.

That said, this feels like grasping at straws. I cannot fathom how with only DNA sample you could get an accurate portrait that face recognition could then match.

You're assuming it is useful enough to find the person, and not just A person.

Fruit of the poisoned tree

No. It just does not work that way. The article specifically mentions that there's no proof whatsoever that the company can actually generate a face from DNA. It's like looking at a textbook on automotive design and predicting exactly what a specific car built 20 years from now look like. General features? Sure - four wheels, a windshield, etc. Anything more specific? Nope, not at all. And this is before we get into environmental factors - think of scratches or aftermarket spoilers on a car. Humans are similarly influenced by their environment, even down to the level of what we eat or the pollutants in the air we breathe.

What the cops did is as close to bullshit fantasy as makes no difference. Asking a fortune teller to draw you a picture would be only slightly less accurate. This is so insanely problematic those cops ought to be up on charges.

https://youtu.be/RhCM-8_2AxY?si=l8hLPGwS6PbknRlt

Clever