Getting Faced

China is quickly embracing facial recognition tech, for better and worse.

- Yue Wang

Would you want to have your face tracked by ever-present cameras so others can know your identity and whereabouts? While the answer is likely to be no for many in the West, the scenario is becoming a reality in China.

Facial-recognition technology, a staple of Minority Report-style movies, is quickly inserting itself into the daily lives of more and more people in the country. Unfettered by privacy regulations, China’s largest internet companies are scooping up hundreds of millions of photos from their online apps to teach computers to analyze facial features. These companies have identified potential revenue streams through advances in artificial intelligence, while catering to Beijing’s interest in deploying the technology for enhanced surveillance.

For example, search giant Baidu showcased its facial-recognition technology at the company’s first AI developer conference in Beijing. It is also using it to verify customer identities for insurance firm Taikang. Ant Financial, the payment affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, now allows users to make transactions by scanning their faces. Today’s Headlines, a popular local-news app, uses facial recognition to verify partner writers, according to Xie Yinan, a spokesperson for Beijing-based facial-recognition startup Megvii, which licenses its technology to news and entertainment platforms.