Shenzhen AI start-up Intellifusion helps city police identify jaywalkers and banned drivers

The Chinese city of Shenzhen is home to hundreds of thousands of vehicles, so it needs stringent regulations to control the heavy flow of traffic through its streets. But with 12 million residents, enforcing those rules is not easy.

Shenzhen’s police have an invisible helping hand, however, courtesy of local firm Intellifusion, which uses proprietary high-definition cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) technology to catch traffic rules violators, whether they are driving or on foot.

For two years now, Intellivision’s system has been quickly matching car number plates and pedestrians’ faces with information stored in the police system – and displaying the names and faces of jaywalkers on nearby LED screens to shame them into complying.

The current system features a network of cameras, each with a 7 million-pixel resolution, Wang Jun, the company’s director of marketing solutions, told the South China Morning Post in March last year.

In the 10 months after the system’s debut, as many as 13,930 jaywalkers were displayed on the LED screen at one busy intersection in Futian district, according to Shenzhen traffic police.

Intellifusion also plans to team up with the country’s technology giants, such as Tencent, and telecommunications network operators to introduce a system where jaywalkers are notified of their transgressions via instant messaging through smartphone apps such as WeChat – as well as being fined, Wang said in the interview.