It’s viewed as magic, and referred to in magical terms. But yes most neural nets/machine learning/vectored transforms are black boxes.
And yes, the paper documents being referenced by a direct scan/rfid hashed value or other similar digital document is still within the chain of custody.
I think my issue is I’m not in direct possession of my ID with a system like this. Too many times the image recognition has been wrong for me to trust something like this.