Columbia University engineers have made a novel discovery in forensics with the development of a new AI system. Contrary to the long-held belief that fingerprints from different fingers of the same person are unique, their research reveals that these fingerprints are actually similar.

This finding emerged from analysing a public US government database of 60,000 fingerprints using an AI system. The system’s ability to identify similarities in fingerprints from the same person improved over time, reaching an accuracy rate of 77 per cent for single pairs. The research was published in Science Advances after rejections from forensic journals.