Huawei, together with one of China’s biggest artificial intelligence (AI) firms Megvii, tested a facial recognition system that could be used to detect members of a minority Muslim group and send alerts to authorities, a new report claims, CNBC writes.
The ethnic minority Uighurs are a repressed Muslim group often targeted by the Chinese government, who mostly live in the western region of Xinjiang.
An official document from 2018 produced by the two Chinese companies showed that Huawei tested Megvii’s software on its video cloud infrastructure. The document was discovered by IPVM, a U.S.-based research company focused on video surveillance analysis. IPVM shared its discovery with The Washington Post, which on Tuesday was the first media organization to report on its content.
The test was carried out to see if Huawei’s hardware is compatible with Megvii’s facial recognition software, the IPVM report said. Huawei provided hardware such as cameras, servers and cloud computing infrastructure, while Megvii provided the software, it added.
As part of the trial, a feature called “Uyghur alert” was tested. Another feature of the software was able to determine “ethnicity” as part of its “face attribute analysis,” according to the report by IPVM.
In 2018, a United Nations report cited concerns that more than a million people were being held in “so-called counter-extremism centres and another two million had been forced into so-called ‘re-education camps’ for political and cultural indoctrination” in Xinjiang.
Many of these camps violate what Amnesty International describes as a “highly restrictive and discriminatory” law that China says is designed to combat extremism.
In June of this year, the UN again raised concerns about “the collective repression of the population, especially religious and ethnic minorities, in Xinjiang and Tibet.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC. The Chinese government has repeatedly denied mistreatment of Uighurs. In response to a CNBC request for comment on a separate article last week on alleged Uighur forced labor, the China embassy in Washington blamed “disinformation” about Uighurs on U.S. politicians who want to “contain China’s development.”
“People of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are leading a happy and fulfilling life, after shaking off poverty and with their livelihoods bettered,” that statement said.
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