Finger lookin' good: KFC China adds facial recognition to its secret recipe

Walking into the KFC restaurant in Beijing's financial district, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a fried chicken outlet like any other. It's only if you head right to the back corner of the shop that you realise you're actually in China's first smart restaurant. KFC has teamed up with Baidu – the search engine company often referred to as "China's Google" – to develop facial-recognition technology that can be used to predict customer's orders. Explaining the idea, a spokesperson for KFC said: "The artificial intelligence-enabled system can recommend menu items based on a customer's estimated age and mood." A press release from Baidu added that "a male customer in his early 20s" would be offered "a set meal of crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and coke", while "a female customer in her 50s" would get a recommendation of "porridge and soybean milk for breakfast". So, steeled for some patronisingly gendered suggestions of salad or maybe a small portion of chips, I headed over to try the restaurant of the future for myself.