Facial recognition snares China’s air con queen Dong Mingzhu for jaywalking, but it’s not what it seems
- Since last year, many Chinese cities have cracked down on jaywalking by investing in facial recognition systems and AI-powered surveillance cameras
- Jaywalkers are identified and shamed by displaying their photographs on large public screens
While China has moved ahead of the rest of the world in making facial recognition technology a part of people’s everyday life, there are systems in the country that need tweaking.
Making a compelling case for change is the recent experience of Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of China’s biggest maker of air conditioners Gree Electric Appliances, who found her face splashed on a huge screen erected along a street in the port city of Ningbo that displays images of people caught jaywalking by surveillance cameras.
That artificial intelligence-backed surveillance system, however, erred in capturing Dong’s image on Wednesday from an advertisement on the side of a moving bus.
The traffic police in Ningbo, a city in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, were quick to recognise the mistake, writing in a post on microblog Sina Weibo on Wednesday that it had deleted the snapshot. It also said the surveillance system would be completely upgraded to cut incidents of false recognition in future.
There were no hard feeling from Gree, which thanked the Ningbo traffic police for their hard work in a Sina Weibo post on the same day. The Shenzhen-listed company also called on people to obey traffic rules to keep the streets safe.
A Gree spokesman said the company had no further comment to make about the incident.