A Brazilian Startup Is Using AI to Fight Crime. But Some People Are Worried.

In Brazil, a tech startup called Gabriel has placed 20,000 cameras across major cities to help police catch criminals. The cameras use artificial intelligence, or AI, to read license plates and share that data with law enforcement. The company was founded in 2020 by Erick Coser, who says the goal is to make streets safer. But not everyone agrees that more cameras mean more freedom.

Gabriel's cameras are spread across São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte. Each camera has a glowing green LED ring, so people can spot them easily. The system reads about four million license plates every single day. When police investigate a crime, they can use Gabriel's data to piece together what happened using footage from many different angles.

Coser started the company partly because of his own experience with crime. In March 2024, a man on a food delivery bike pulled a gun on Coser outside his girlfriend's apartment building. The robber stole his phone and drained thousands of Brazilian reals — Brazil's currency — from his bank account. Coser later learned that one of Gabriel's cameras captured the getaway, and the robber was eventually caught after committing more crimes in the same area.

Gabriel does not sell its services to the government or police. Instead, apartment buildings and businesses pay for it like a monthly internet bill — about five dollars per household each month. Coser says most Brazilians are willing to give up a little privacy in exchange for feeling safer. He also says being open and honest about how Gabriel works is what keeps the company trustworthy.

When police make an arrest using Gabriel's help, subscribers get a message on WhatsApp telling them about it. The company also launched a free app called Gabriel365, which shows crime data on an interactive map. Coser believes that sharing information with the public builds trust. He points to other surveillance companies that he says lost people's trust because they kept their work secret.

Still, Gabriel has faced serious criticism. In 2023, a news investigation found that Gabriel was sharing real-time data with police through private chat apps like WhatsApp and Slack. Gabriel said those chats were created to handle a large number of requests, and it has since changed how it works with police. Now all police requests go through a special platform where each officer logs in with their own account, so there is a record of everything they do.

In November, the government of Rio de Janeiro ordered Gabriel to remove 400 cameras from public roads. A local lawmaker said the company had a worrying relationship with government officials and was sharing private data without people's knowledge. He compared the situation to a 'Big Brother' scenario — a phrase that means being watched all the time without permission.

Gabriel says it will never use facial recognition — technology that identifies people by scanning their faces. When a crime victim shares a police report with Gabriel, the company gives them video footage with all faces blurred out. Police receive the footage without the blurring. Coser says Gabriel does not decide who is guilty. That decision, he says, is left to the police and the courts.

But some experts say Gabriel still plays a role in facial recognition even if it doesn't run the software itself. In August, Gabriel announced it was connecting its system to Smart Sampa, a São Paulo city program that does use facial recognition. Gabriel also feeds live video and license plate data to the military police in Rio de Janeiro, whose headquarters uses facial recognition software. 'Gabriel is part of a larger ecosystem of surveillance,' said Jess Reia, a professor at the University of Virginia who studies digital technology and democracy.

Researchers have raised concerns about how facial recognition is used in Brazil. A report from 2025 found that the technology has spread quickly across the country with very little regulation. One researcher, Pablo Nunes, tracked Brazil's first facial recognition arrests in 2019 and found that about 90 percent of those arrested were Black. He argues that passing video footage to police — even without running facial recognition itself — allows Gabriel to avoid responsibility for mistakes that happen afterward.

Nunes also points out that Gabriel's cameras are mostly found in wealthier neighborhoods. This means that richer residents who can afford to subscribe get faster police attention than poorer residents. He also notes that crime rates in Brazil's biggest cities have already been going down since 2017, even without Gabriel. Nunes says a Gabriel camera was recently installed on his own building even after he spoke out against it. 'I lost the battle,' he said.

Coser says he has no plans to sell Gabriel's services to national governments and says he doesn't want to play that game. He points to cities like New York and London as examples of places that used data and evidence to reduce crime. He also mentioned China as a country Brazil could learn from in terms of technology. However, China is an authoritarian country — meaning the government has very strict control over its people — and it has been widely criticized for building one of the biggest surveillance systems in the world. Brazil itself lived under a military dictatorship until 1985, and Coser says every society needs an honest conversation about how to balance safety and privacy.