University of Maryland (UMD) professor Dinesh Manocha, a decorated scholar in AI and robotics, created machine-learning software "useful for surveillance" that can read people's personalities and "predict their behavior" for Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
University of Maryland (UMD) professor Dinesh Manocha, a decorated scholar in AI and robotics, created machine-learning software "useful for surveillance" that can read people's personalities and "predict their behavior" for Chinese tech giant Alibaba.
SHANGHAI: Technology giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has facial recognition technology which can specifically pick out members of China’s Uighur minority, surveillance industry researcher IPVM said in a report.
Alibaba itself said it was “dismayed” a unit developed software which can tag ethnicity in videos, and that the feature was never intended to be deployed to customers.
The report comes as human rights groups accuse China of forcing over 1 million Muslim Uighurs into labor camps in the region of Xinjiang, and call out firms suspected of complicity.
China has repeatedly denied forcing anyone into what it has called vocational training centers, and has also said Xinjiang is under threat from Islamist militants.
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image captionCotton production in Xinjiang
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has said it will not allow its technology to be used for targeting or identifying specific ethnic groups.
The statement follows reports that the company’s content moderation technology can pick out Uighur minorities.
Alibaba said it was “dismayed that Alibaba Cloud developed facial technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery. We have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering, Alibaba said.
The firm said it never intended the technology to be used in this manner.
US-based surveillance industry researcher IPVM published a report on Wednesday that said software capable of identifying Uighurs appears in Alibaba’s Cloud Shield content moderation service for websites.