Introduction

Over the past year, the opportunities and challenges of AI and biometrics have delivered many headlines and a need to clarify what policies and legislation will need to be put in place to ensure the responsible use of these technologies. The very first question the Institute members have identified is whether all biometric uses are AI. Many believe that is not the case and the two should be separated. Therefore, an explanation (and definition) of the relationship of biometrics and AI is critical to understand how policy and legislation will apply to biometrics.

The Institute is therefore releasing a discussion paper untangling the issues and putting them to its global membership for debate. The output will be a new entry to the Biometrics Institute Explanatory Dictionary as well as briefings to members, policy makers and regulators on the findings and viewpoints.

From April to June 2024, we will take this discussion into the upcoming Biometrics Institute conferences:

• ID@Borders on the 18-19 April in Helsinki will have a first working group meeting that members can join in person to have a first conversation about the issues.
• Asia-Pacific Conference on the 22-23 May in Sydney will have a panel of experts engaging with the audience to collect viewpoints from the region.
• US Strategy Forum on the 20 June in Washington DC will have a similar panel of experts engaging with the audience.
• An On the Pulse Conversation in an online format will then be scheduled between July and September to allow our global audience to join in.
• The Congress in London on the 22-23 October is going to look at the findings followed by the Showcase Australia on the 4 December in Canberra.

We are going to ask the following questions based on the discussion paper:

• How would you define the relationship between AI and biometrics: Are biometrics to be subset of AI or is AI to be a subset of biometrics?
• Biometrics & AI: What are the corresponding issues?
• How does AI interact with biometrics: is there a relatively small overlap between the two or are they completely separate?

If you have a view on what the relationship between AI and biometrics is, then you are encouraged to join this important conversation to help shape the output that we will use to better inform decision-makers.