Alibaba Facial Recognition: E-Commerce Giant Denies Surveillance Accusation Over Uighur Minorities
Following reports about Chinese-based company Alibaba spying on Uighur minorities, the e-commerce giant broke its silence and addressed the rumor once and for all.
In a statement to Alizila, Alibaba said that it was dismayed that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery. In short, the tech firm never intended the technology to be used in such a shady manner. We never intended our technology to be used for and will not permit it to be used for targeting specific ethnic groups, and we have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering. This trial technology was not deployed by any customer. We do not and will not permit our technology to be used to target or identify specific ethnic group, the statement reads.