Amazon has extended its moratorium on the police use of its facial recognition software.

The company first imposed a suspension of the technology by law enforcement in June 2020.

The move came as protests against the use of police brutality against black people and other people of colour swept across the United States, triggered by the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

Amazon Rekognition uses deep learning technology to identify objects, people, text, scenes, and activities in images and videos. The software can analyse faces and also detect inappropriate content.

The extension, first reported by Reuters, was welcomed by human rights groups who have warned that inaccurate face matches can lead to miscarriages of justice.

Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy project director at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the news agency that he supported the move and called on federal and state governments to ban law enforcement's use of the software.

"Face recognition technology fuels the over-policing of Black and Brown communities, and has already led to the false arrests and wrongful incarcerations of multiple Black men," he told Reuters in a statement.

Amazon said last year that it hoped that the US government would establish rules for the ethical use of the technology, but no new legislation has come to fruition.

National Technology News has reached out to Amazon for comment.

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