Tennessee grandmother spent six months in jail after AI facial recognition wrongly indentified her
In the ultimate case of mistaken identity, AI is accused of wrongly identifying a Tennessee grandma and is being blamed for her spending an extended stint behind bars.
While there are enough fears about artificial intelligence taking our jobs, being used in a potential World War III, or simply deciding to wipe out mankind, there's another reason you’ll want to be wary of this tech.
Away from self-driving vehicles being a little glitchy sometimes, 50-year-old Angela Lipps was banged up after AI supposedly incorrectly identified her as the perpetrator of a bank fraud crime in North Dakota.
The problem is, Lipps says that she's never even been to the state, which is some 1,9000 kilometers away from her home.
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Speaking to WDAY News, Lipps explained: "It was so scary, I can still see it in my head, over and over again."
Maintaining she'd never been on a plane before her arrest, and doesn't know anyone in North Dakota, Lipps' travels had been limited to neighboring states. Authorities flew Lipps across the state to face criminal charges in North Dakota after facial recognition software appeared to identify the wrong woman.
She was arrested by U.S. Marshals and escorted away from her home at gunpoint, then held in a Tennessee county jail as a 'fugitive' from North Dakota.
This is where she would remain for the next four months, and as an accused fugitive, she was held without bail.
During this time, the Fargo Police Department was conducting an investigation while Lipps faced four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information, as well as four counts of theft.
Being told that she had to fight the charges in the Flickertail State, Lipps was given a court-appointed lawyer to oversee the extradition process.
WDAY News obtained Lipps' file from the Fargo PD, stating she was one of several bank fraud cases being investigated in April and May 2025. The woman who was identified as Lipps was seen using a fake U.S. Army military I.D. card in order to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars.
Court documents claim that Fargo police used facial recognition software to analyze surveillance footage from the bank, and although the detective working the case wrote that Lipps didn't seem to match the suspect after looking at her social media and Tennessee driver's license, she remained in jail.
Speaking after her ordeal, Lipps says no one from the Fargo Police Department called to question her. Left in her jail cells until officers from North Dakota picked her up on October 30, this was 108 days after her arrest. She then appeared in a North Dakota courtroom on October 31.
Lawyer Jay Greenwood implored authorities to look closer at Lipps if all they had to go on was facial recognition software, adding that her bank records showed she’d been in Tennessee: "Around the same time she's depositing Social Security checks…she is buying cigarettes at a gas station, around the same time, she is buying a pizza, she is using a cash app to buy an Uber Eats."
Lipps was eventually released on Christmas Eve, but found herself stranded in Fargo with her summer clothes and no money. A GoFundMe has now been set up in her honor and currently sits at nearly $36,000.
Local defense attorneys gave her money to cover food an accomodation for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, before the F5 Project's Adam Martin drove her to Chicago so she could get back home.
WDAY News says Fargo Police Chief David Zibolski has refused an on-camera interview, but when asked why no one from Fargo PD spoke to Lipps for those five months at his retirement press conference, Zibolski thanked them for the question and added, "But we are not here to talk about that today."
As well as claiming no one from the Fargo Police Department has ever apologized, Lipps is adamant she'll never return to North Dakota.