AI Behaviour Detection in Public-Space Video

Systems in this group analyse live camera feeds in public places and raise an alert when body movements match patterns the system has been trained to treat as relevant, for example hitting, kicking, shoving, running, a gathering of onlookers or a person lying on the ground. The authorities describe people as reduced to stick figures or pose data so that faces are not shown, and an operator in a police control room decides whether to act. The systems are not designed to identify anyone.

In Germany the approach has been tested in Mannheim since December 2018 with software from the Fraunhofer IOSB, in Hamburg since July 2023 with the same institute's software, and at Kottbusser Tor in Berlin since October 2026 with software from Staige, a company linked to Adesso SE. Several Land police laws and the 2026 reform of the Bundespolizeigesetz provide or propose powers for such pattern recognition. State data protection authorities have said such measures should be evaluated regularly and have raised concerns about using recorded footage of passers-by to train the software.

This entry is distinct from AI Video Search and Analytics, which covers searching recorded footage in investigations, and from Algorithmic video surveillance (VSA), which covers event detection under France's legal framework. Systems that identify people by their faces in live video are recorded under the facial recognition entries.