AI can’t beat my composite sketches, says record-breaking police artist

The holder of the Guinness World Records mark for the composite sketch artist with the most positively identified criminals has expressed doubts that artificial intelligence programs will ever be able to perform her kind of work as well as the human hand can.

In an interview with the organization, known for curating a database of more than 40,000 world records, the retired Houston police department sketch artist Lois Gibson said she has repeatedly tried to entrust her job to computer programs designed to do it – yet she maintained that she had no success in doing so.

Gibson’s comments come as tech giants including Microsoft and Google are making multi-billion dollar investments in AI systems that they say inevitably will replace many tasks now performed by people.

Photograph: Wikimedia CommonsAs of February, the sketches she had drawn during a career as a forensic artist that began in 1982 had helped authorities positively identify more than 1,300 suspected criminals, many of whom went on to be convicted, Guinness World Records said.

After temporarily making a living sketching portraits for tourists, Gibson said she acquired the skills necessary to become a forensic artist and then convinced the Houston police department to give her a job.

Part of her job was to calm and distract highly agitated victims through techniques that let them better access their memories and verbalize what their attackers looked like, which in turn enabled Gibson to draw more accurate forensic sketches.