Instagram Enables Amber Alerts: How Intersection of social media and Machine Learning Technologies Are Transforming Child Safety

AMBER Alert or America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response System is one of the United States of America’s greatest contributions to the modern world. This system helps advance child safety and protection across the world. 

The AMBER Alert System was created in 1996 after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas and brutally murdered. The AMBER Alert system is intended to prevent another innocent child’s death from occurring. 

The AMBER Alert system instantly notifies and galvanizes communities, law enforcement, and society to assist in searching, rescuing, and recovering endangered missing or abducted children. 

In the United States of America (USA), AMBER Alerts are distributed via radio stations, internet radio, television stations, text messages, Cable TV, and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Weather radio. 

Since its inception in the USA, the AMBER Alert system has been readily adopted by other countries like Canada, Mexico, Australia, Europe, Malaysia, Ecuador, Russia, and Taiwan.

Just in the US alone, as of May 1st, 2022, the AMBER Alert System has helped recover 1,114 children successfully. In nearly 7 in every 10 AMBER Alert cases, children are reunited with their parents. 

The advent of social media, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence is revolutionizing Amber Alert programs worldwide. On June 1st, 2022, Meta began rolling out Amber Alerts on its social media platform, Instagram, to notify people of missing children in their area. In addition to Instagram, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies are also being leveraged to help improve the accuracy and detection of the AMBER Alert systems. Today’s AI  Solutions can detect vehicle types, vehicle colour, vehicle license plates, road signs, and marketing signage to identify offenders associated with child abductions, kidnappings, and murders. AI Companies such as REKOR and law enforcement agencies across the US, Canada, Mexico, and Europe are leveraging computer vision and image detection technologies. 

The combination of data generated from social networking platforms like Instagram, coupled with data processing speed and power offered by cloud computing and advances in artificial intelligence fields such as Computer Vision and Image Detection are all melding to help create a safer society for kids, parents and their families by improving the identification, safety and tracking of missing children.