We may not like the security lines at airports or the idea that terrorists may board our plane or enter our country. Several AI devices are designed to minimize these possibilities.
1. Facial recognition at airports. Jet Blue is experimenting with facial-recognition technology (a kind of machine vision to match travelers' faces against prestored photos, such as passport, driver's license). This will eliminate the need for boarding passes and increase security. The match is of high quality. The technology pioneered by British Airways is used by Delta, KLM, and other airlines using similar technologies for self-checking of bags. Similar technology is used by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency where people's photos taken at arrivals are matched against the database of photos and other documents.
2. China's system. The major airports in China are using a system similar to that of Jet Blue, using facial recognition for verifying the identity of passengers. The idea is to eliminate boarding passes and expedite the flow of boarding. The system is also used to recognize airport employees entering restricted areas.
3. Using bots. Several airports (e.g., New York, Beijing) offer conversational bots (Chapter 12) to provide travelers with airport guidance. Bots provide also information about customs and immigration services.
4. Spotting liars at airport. This application is emerging to help immigration services to vet passengers at airports and land entry borders. With increased security, both immigration and airline personal may need to query passengers.
Here is the solution that can be economically used to query all passengers at high speed, so there will be short waiting lines. This emerging system is called Automated Virtual Agent for Truth Assessments in Real Time (AVATAR). The essentials of the system are as follows:
a. AVATAR is a bot in which you first scan your passport.
b. AVATAR asks you a few questions. Several AI technologies are used in this project, such as AI, Big Data analytics, the "Cloud," robotics, machine learning, machine vision, and bots.
c. You answer the questions.
d. AVATAR's sensors and other AI technologies collect data from your body, such as voice variability, facial expression (e.g., muscle engagement), eyes' position and movements, mouth movements, and body posture. Researchers feel that it takes less effort to tell the truth than to die, so researchers compared the answers to routine questions.

Questions for Case
1. List the benefits of AI devices to travelers.
2. List the benefits to governments and airline companies.
3. Relate this case to machine vision and other AI tools that deal with people’s biometrics.