The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Interrogation: Lies and Truth
The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Interrogation: Lies and Truth
Corresponding Author:
Yi Chang Wu
Forensic Science Division, Investigation Bureau, Ministry of Justice
No. 74, Zhonghua Rd., Xindian Dist., New Taipei City 231, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
Email: [email protected]
1. INTRODUCTION
During case investigations, officers may request criminal suspects to appear for an interrogation in
order to investigate a crime or gather evidence. During these interrogations, officers are required to maintain
an honest demeanor and are prohibited from using improper techniques, such as violence, coercion, bribery,
fraud, or exhaustion. The purpose of these interrogations is to lead the interrogee into telling the truth and to
glean information from their statements in order to further clarify the case or uncover new clues. Numerous
cases are solved as a result of interrogee statements, indicating that interrogations are a crucial means for
investigators to gather criminal facts. However, even if the interrogee is not the actual perpetrator, they may
occasionally lie for a variety of reasons. In addition, to avoid punishment, actual criminals tend to deny or
distort criminal facts. Therefore, if officers are unable to determine the veracity of a suspect’s statements or
decipher their intentions, then the investigation may become stalled or may proceed in the wrong direction,
thereby wasting time and resources and allowing criminals to go unpunished. Hence, investigators must
employ effective interrogation techniques while adhering to the law.
As a result of the development of hardware equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) in the area of
image recognition, the traditional method of human supervision has evolved to include the integration of
systems and information technologies to achieve smart image recognition. The computational and logical
capabilities of various deep learning algorithms have also enabled the rapid processing of big data and the
improvement of the learning and recognition efficiency [1]–[10]. Studies in this area have spanned a wide
range of fields, including crime warning, license plate recognition, local disease recognition, and depression
and dementia treatment [11]–[14]. Foreign law enforcement agencies are currently investigating the use of
face recognition in interrogations in an effort to reduce prejudice against people of different races and
genders [15].
The primary purpose of a case investigation is to obtain criminal evidence and clarify case-related
facts. In this scenario, the investigation process is conducted in an interactive fashion. In each case, physical
evidence, documentary evidence, and related parties are interconnected. To solve a crime, the investigators
must rely on existing clues and evidence. Thus, interrogation is one of the most crucial means for
investigators to clarify facts and obtain additional case-related information during case investigations.
Keli [16] examined the impact ratio (with vs. without impact) of the 17 reasons why 20 criminal
suspects voluntarily confessed as shown in Table 1. Among these reasons, lies being exposed impacted the
fifth largest number of suspects, indicating that if officers can immediately expose the interrogee’s lies during
interrogation, the interrogee becomes more likely to confess. The concept of facial microexpressions was first
proposed in 1966 [17], and it refers to the subconscious responses that people exhibit when stimulated. The
majority of these expressions consist of subtle changes in facial features and muscles. These changes are
difficult to conceal and are prevalent across all racial and age groups [18]–[20]. In recent years, facial
microexpressions have been used in studies to identify lying interrogees.
In recent years, many units have developed vastly divergent perspectives on the use of polygraphs.
Polygraphs are no longer used by law enforcement units as evidence in trials. Instead, they are used as
interrogation aids. During an interrogation, the interrogee may lie or conceal the truth for a variety of reasons.
Therefore, in this study, we developed a lie recognition system that uses AI deep learning to replace
traditional lie detection techniques with a noncontact-based lie detection technique so that investigations are
not delayed if the interrogee refuses to take the polygraph or is required to take the polygraph at another time.
During interrogations, our system can objectively determine the emotional state and truthfulness of the
interrogee. The results can then be combined with case information and the investigators’ own experiences to
modify the direction of the interrogation, thereby accelerating the investigation process.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces our study methods, including
how we collected the data and extracted useful information for subsequent analyses, section 3 presents our
results and discussion, and section 4 concludes the study.
2. METHODS
Because truth is essential in decision-making, detecting misleading information before such
information is included in the decision-making process is crucial. To screen and clarify a large amount of
case-related information within a short period of time, lowering the detection thresholds to avoid missing
critical information is essential. Several lie detection methods are currently available, depending on the case,
environment, and purpose. However, the most common lie detection method is polygraphs. Polygraphs rely
on contact sensors and the analysis of physiological changes, such as heart rate fluctuations [21], to detect
misleading behavior. After the emergence of the facial action coding system (FACS) and AI deep learning,
changes have been observed in the traditional method for lie detection.
Deep neural networks (DNNs) have made considerable progress in image and sound processing. In
addition, a number of deep learning techniques, such as DNNs, convolutional neural networks, deep belief
The use of artificial intelligence in interrogation: lies and truth (Yi-Chang Wu)
334 ISSN: 2722-2586
networks, and loop neural networks, have been applied to computer vision, speech recognition, natural
language processing, audio recognition, and bioinformatics, with remarkable results.
Our proposed system captures facial action unit (AU) signals by using OpenFace [22]–[24],
performs unsupervised learning by using gcForest, and determines whether an interrogee is likely to confess
if their lies are exposed. The detection process of the proposed system is depicted in Figure 1. The system
immediately performs detection and makes decisions during interrogations.
Figure 2. The difference between simple and deep learning neural networks
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2.3. gcForest
Introduced by Zhou and Feng [28], multigrained cascade forest (gcForest) uses a cascading method
to stack multilayer random forests in order to improve feature representation and learning performance.
gcForest undergoes representation learning through random cascade forests, processes data hierarchically
similar to deep learning networks (DNNs), and uses different forest types to create learning diversity and
form waterfall-like structures. The model also uses sliding windows and multigrained scanning to preprocess
input features, and it inputs the extracted feature vectors into cascade forests to train and splice the model
repeatedly until the verification results converge. Compared with DNNs, gcForest requires considerably less
training data to achieve satisfactory performance. In addition, because gcForest contains fewer
hyperparameters, does not require the hyperparameter settings to be adjusted, and can control tree-like
components through self-adaptation, it consumes only a few computational resources and samples, making
its training relatively straightforward [29].
𝑇𝑃 + 𝑇𝑁
𝐴𝑐𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦 =
𝑇𝑃 + 𝑇𝑁 + 𝐹𝑃 + 𝐹𝑁
c. Precision: Precision is the percentage of samples that are truly positive out of all samples predicted to be
positive. It is calculated as follows.
𝑇𝑃
𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 =
𝑇𝑃 + 𝐹𝑃
d. Recall: Recall is the percentage of samples that are truly positive out of all positive samples. It is
calculated as follows.
𝑇𝑃
𝑅𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙 =
𝑇𝑃 + 𝐹𝑁
e. F1-score: Precision and recall have an interdependent relationship. Optimally, they should both be high.
However, in real-life scenarios, the higher one is, the lower the other one becomes. Therefore, precision
and recall must be comprehensively assessed. To this end, the most common method is to use the
F1-score as a comprehensive indicator as follows.
2 1 1 2𝑃𝑅
= + ⇒ 𝐹1 =
𝐹 𝑃 𝑅 𝑃+𝑅
f. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC): The AUC is a common statistical value that
represents the predictive ability of a classifier. The greater the area under the curve is, the stronger the
predictive ability becomes:
The use of artificial intelligence in interrogation: lies and truth (Yi-Chang Wu)
336 ISSN: 2722-2586
- An AUC value greater than 0.5 indicates that the classification effect of the classifier is superior to
random guesses, indicating that the model provides valuable predictions.
- An AUC value of 0.5 indicates that the classification effect of the classifier is equivalent to random
guesses, indicating that the model does not provide valuable predictions.
Before the proposed lie detection system was actually used, it was first trained. The videos in
the datasets were divided into 50% lies and 50% truths at 30 frames per second. The samples were then
divided into two groups as follows: 70% for training and 30% for testing. To achieve facial marking
and detection, a constrained local neural field was used, which provided over 700 features, of which 35
were associated with facial AUs. Because the p values of AU01_r, AU23_r, and AU17_C were too low,
they were disregarded during the training process to increase the detection success rate of the training
model [33].
Before detection was performed, the proposed system was trained using the real-life trial dataset,
Miami University Deception Detection Database, and BOL dataset. The real-life trial dataset included
high-risk videos of actual court proceedings, whereas the other two datasets included experimental
laboratory-produced low-risk videos. Table 2 lists the detection results of the proposed system. We compared
the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score of the proposed system trained using the three different datasets.
The results indicated that the system produced the highest accuracy (95.11%) when trained using actual court
videos and the lowest accuracy (88.19%) when trained using the BOL database. All other indicators
exhibited scores over 80%.
Table 2. Assessment indicators of the effectiveness of the proposed lie detection system
Data Set Accuracy Precision Recall F1-Score
TRIAL 95.11% 95.39% 93.97% 94.68%
MU3D 90.83% 88.99% 81.27% 84.96%
BOL 88.19% 88.64% 89.06% 88.85%
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Figure 4 depicts the system effectiveness indicators as measured by the AUC. When the proposed
system was trained using the real-life trial dataset, the Miami University Deception Detection Database, and
the BOL dataset, AUC values of 95.03%, 88.29%, and 88.14%, respectively, were obtained. Among the three
datasets, the proposed system demonstrated optimal detection performance for all indicators when trained
using actual court videos.
TRIAL/AUC 95.03%
MU3D/AUC 88.29%
BOL/AUC 88.14%
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338 ISSN: 2722-2586
Table 3 compares the effectiveness of the proposed system to other court video evaluation systems.
The proposed system achieved the highest scores across all four indicators, with an accuracy and F1-score of
95.11% and 94.68%, respectively, indicating its superior detection rate stability and reliability.
4. CONCLUSION
Combining AI and image detection technologies has increased their applicability and development
within the field of information engineering. Technology enables faster access to necessary information and
has become an increasingly popular tool to enhance the effectiveness of investigations. In this study, we used
existing imaging equipment in interrogation rooms and a noncontact lie detection method to expand the
application of lie detection, determine the true emotions of interrogees without their knowledge, and provide
investigators with objective detection results. Currently, the accuracy of our system exceeds 80%. To achieve
the same accuracy in practice, additional related videos and videos of individuals of Asian descent must be
added in future training scenarios to improve the feature extraction accuracy of our system.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the Ministry of Justice for the financial support
through the Science and Technology Project (110-1301-10-17-03 and 111-1301-10-28-01).
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BIOGRAPHIES OF AUTHORS
Yao-Cheng Liu works for the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau. He holds
a master’s degree from the Department of Computer and Communication, Jinwen University
of Science and Technology. He can be contacted at [email protected].
Ru-Yi Huang works for the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau. She
obtained her bachelor’s degree in tourism from National Chi Nan University. She can be
contacted at [email protected].
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