Chinese firms are driving the rise of AI surveillance across Africa

Artificial intelligence technology is proliferating fast across the world and is being deployed in applications from speech recognition to deepfake videos and monitoring traffic congestion. It's also increasingly being used to monitor and track citizens, according to a new report. At least 75 out of 176 nations surveyed globally are actively using AI technologies for surveillance purposes, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These include facial recognition systems, smart policing tools, and the establishment of safe city platforms. The leading vendors of these systems globally are Chinese firms, led by Huawei, which has supplied these technologies to at least 50 states worldwide.