Police body cameras equipped with artificial intelligence have been trained to detect the faces of about 7,000 people on a “high risk” watch list in the Canadian city of Edmonton, a live test of whether facial-recognition technology shunned as too intrusive could have a place in policing throughout North America.

But six years after leading body camera maker Axon Enterprise Inc. said police use of facial-recognition technology posed serious ethical concerns, the pilot project — switched on last week — is raising alarms far beyond Edmonton, the continent’s northernmost city of more than 1 million people.

A former chair of Axon’s AI ethics board, which led the company to temporarily abandon facial recognition in 2019, told The Associated Press he’s concerned that the Arizona-based company

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