# States Deploy AI Perception in Public Space

Governments increasingly deploy machine perception in public spaces using architectures engineered to sit just outside biometric restrictions, so expect recurring pilots built on pose and behaviour analysis, and recurring legal challenges over whether that distinction holds.

- Conviction: 40 / 100 (forming)
- Horizon: Emerging (watchlist)
- Tracking since: 2026-08-06T00:00:00.000Z
- Last updated: 2026-08-06T05:55:21.314Z
- Canonical: https://polylog.news/ai/trends/state-ai-surveillance-deployment
- Publisher: Polylog
- Affected regions: Global, China

## Recent evidence

- [confirms] Berlin Police Begin AI Video Analysis at Kottbusser Tor This Month (2026-08-06): Berlin police begin AI video analysis at Kottbusser Tor this month, flagging behavioural anomalies while rendering people as schematic stick figures to avoid biometric facial recognition, backed by roughly 2.47 million euros of Senate investment through 2030. The stick-figure abstraction is the engineered workaround the thesis names, and a six-year budget line signals this is a permanent programme rather than a pilot.