What started as a social media trend for the department, has quickly become a tool. The Goodyear Police Department released an AI generated sketch earlier this week.
After being shown an AI update, Mike Bonasera with Goodyear police saw potential for forensic sketches.
“A light bulb went off in my head and I’m like ‘let’s just stick one of my drawings in there to kind of give it a new aspect.' If it’s doing that well, let’s see,” Bonasera said. “It made my jaw drop.”
The department is one of the first to use ChatGPT and AI for official police sketches. Bonasera said the department is only beginning their work with this technology.
“We are hopeful, it is still in its infancy stage,” Bonasera said.
Facial recognition and age progression of missing people are some of the current ideas being worked on for AI use.
“It’s using a different technology, and I think it’s just because forensic art took a little bit of a back seat that’s why it hadn’t been thought of or done,” Bonasera said.
Bonasera said though AI generates the image, forensic artists are still needed. Interviews with witnesses or victims with the artist to get identifying physical characteristics can’t be done through technology.
AI is a tool used to make adjustments such as age, facial hair or scars that couldn’t be as easily with sketches.
“It’s now something that’s instant and before we couldn’t really do that,” Bonasera said. “Once that person says ‘that’s it, that’s the person in my mind’. Then that’s all we need, that becomes our sketch.”
After releasing the photo, concerns about people coming forward were brought up.
“But it’s definitely not hindering people from coming forward versus a drawing, it actually seems like it is more effective,” Bonasera said.
He added they have even got a few leads for the case this photo was released for. He still encourages anyone with information or recognizes the person in the sketch to reach out to Goodyear police.
