Facial recognition camera catches top businesswoman "jaywalking" because her face was on a bus

Local police admit mistake and have upgraded system to prevent further errors

Reading Time:2 minutes

Dong Mingzhu’s face shown on the screen of an intersection in Ningbo. (Picture: Weibo)

Published: 7:00pm, 22 Nov 2018Updated: 8:46am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Chinese cities have widely deployed facial recognition systems on their streets to catch and fine jaywalkers... but sometimes it doesn’t work as planned.

At one intersection in the eastern city of Ningbo, the face of famous Chinese businesswoman Dong Mingzhu was displayed on a public screen dedicated to “naming and shaming” jaywalkers caught by the city’s facial recognition system. The photo of Dong included a line of text saying that she had just broken the law by crossing during a red light.

Except that she wasn’t jaywalking. She wasn’t there at all. What the cameras captured was her face on an advertisement on the side of a bus that had just driven through the intersection.

A photo of the display screen has been making rounds on Weibo, with users poking fun at the failure of the much-hyped ability of facial recognition. “Who is that person clinging onto the bus? Serious Warning!” One Weibo user joked.

Ningbo’s traffic police later posted a statement on Weibo, admitting that the facial recognition system made a mistake and said they had deleted the record of the violation. They also claimed that they had completed an upgrade of the system to prevent future such errors.

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