The French government has collected €10M after ML software found undeclared private pools
The French government has collected nearly €10 million in additional taxes after using AI & ML software have found thousands of undeclared private swimming pools in aerial photos. The software was developed to identify pools, with this information then cross-referenced with national tax and property registries. With the system, developed by Google and Capgemini, the French tax office can identify pools on aerial images and cross-checks them with land registry databases. It has uncovered 20,356 pools and will be extended across the country.
ML is here to find your swimming pools:
The project is somewhat limited in scope and has so far analyzed photos covering only nine of France’s 96 metropolitan departments. The challenge is not to ban swimming pools, but to guarantee our vital water needs. Private pools have lately become more popular in France due to the recent heat wave, but they’re also controversial due to their water usage during a historic drought.
France is believed to have about 3.2 mn private swimming pools and reported a boom even before the Covid lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. The AI software couldn’t distinguish “blue rectangles” representing swimming pools and similar objects that were actually things like solar panels. The project is somewhat limited in scope and has so far analyzed photos covering only nine of France’s 96 metropolitan departments.
The Google-Capgemini software had a 30% margin of error. The system confused solar panels for swimming pools with an error rate of 30 percent, but the French tax office says that it has since increased the accuracy. As property taxes are based on the rental value of the property, improvements mean an increase in taxes. It could also eventually be used to find undeclared home extensions, and gazebos, which are also used for factoring in property taxes.
Source: analyticsinsight.net
