AI-enabled smart lamp-posts raise surveillance concerns

The Guardian reports Conflow Power Group’s solar-powered iLamps, camera-equipped streetlights installed at a Warwickshire hospital car park, can read number plates, capture faces and are marketed as able to run distributed AI processing. Conflow says the iLamps could help track missing people or fight crime, and chairman Edward Fitzpatrick told the BBC the functionality would be developed in partnership “with the relevant authority.” The company also announced a deal to supply 50,000 iLamps to Katsina state in Nigeria. Civil liberties group Big Brother Watch warned the technology could incorporate gait analysis and behaviour-detection AI, raising new privacy risks. The article notes little local public information or official answers, Conflow directs queries to its online material, the local authority refers questions to the hospital, and the hospital did not respond. Residents interviewed were divided, with one saying the town centre is already full of cameras. The Guardian says the deployments and the overseas order concentrate questions about who will own the harvested data, what AI capabilities will be enabled by future updates, and whether regulators or authorities will set limits on use.