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Artificial intelligence
TechInnovation

China’s computer vision unicorns face challenges on many fronts as they expand beyond surveillance: SCMP report

  • New report from SCMP Research delves into computer vision unicorns that have made global headlines against the backdrop of US-China tech rivalry
  • Companies such as Megvii, SenseTime and Yitu are expanding from surveillance into areas such as retail, health care, finance and more

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The South China Morning Post’s China AI Deep-Dive: Computer Vision Report finds that the main challenge for the country’s unicorns is to now expand their CV business beyond surveillance. Photo: SCMP
Masha Borak

A new report by the South China Morning Post finds that while the country’s computer vision (CV) industry is growing rapidly, market leaders such as SenseTime, Megvii and Yitu are facing a growing number of challenges, both at home and overseas as tech rivalry increases with the US.

The China AI Deep-Dive: Computer Vision Report, released this week, finds that the main challenge for the country’s computer vision champions is to expand their expertise in this branch of artificial intelligence from mainstays such as surveillance and security into areas such as retail, finance, health care and autonomous vehicles.

Computer vision is a field of computer science that enables computers to visually identify and process objects in digital images or videos. It currently takes up a 50 per cent share of China’s entire AI market, and the country’s CV unicorns lead the world in terms of funding, with US$4.5 billion in venture capital raised between 2016-18.

In the 1970s, US inventor and futurist Raymond Kurzweil presented one of the first commercial products that enabled machines to “see” the real world: the omni-font Optical Character Recognition system, a software program that turned images of text into code. Today, artificial intelligence-powered computer vision is employed in applications ranging from facial recognition to guiding autonomous vehicles.

China has identified computer vision as one of the core areas of AI in its policies, while companies working in the field have benefited from the country’s application of it to surveillance and smart city projects. However, some of China’s CV companies have been added to the US entity list, which blocks access to US-origin components, after Washington alleged that some of their technology had been used to monitor Muslim minority groups in China’s western Xinjiang region.

The Post released its inaugural China AI Report 2020 in February, which examined how government direction, access to large troves of big data, robust funding and entrepreneurial zeal had allowed the country to take a lead in the deployment of artificial intelligence.
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