PRIVACY: AI cameras introduced in London to monitor social distancing and lockdown restrictions.

Vivacity Labs said they have more than 1,000 sensors installed across the UK, in cities including London, Manchester, Oxford, Cambridge and Nottingham.

Chief Operating Officer at Vivacity Peter Mildon told BBC Radio Kent on Wednesday that the data is potentially “useful for informing policy decisions” regarding lockdown measures.

He stressed that the cameras are not CCTV but that they operate as a data collating device rather than a camera that stores footage.

“They are not recording any footage, they are not streaming any footage and no one is actually watching it,” he said.

For now, anyway.

Besides, with facial recognition presumably baked in, the data is just as valuable even if no video is recorded.