'Racist' facial recognition sparks ethical concerns in Russia

TBILISI, July 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - (Editor's note: contains offensive language and terms of racial abuse) From scanning residents' faces to let them into their building to spotting police suspects in a crowd, the rise of facial recognition is accompanied by a growing chorus of concern about unethical uses of the technology. A report published on Monday by U.S.-based researchers showing that Russian facial recognition companies have built tools to detect a person's race has raised fears among digital rights groups, who describe the technology as "purpose-made for discrimination." Developer guides and code examples unearthed by video surveillance research firm IPVM show software advertised by four of Russia's biggest facial analytics firms can use artificial intelligence (AI) to classify faces based on their perceived ethnicity or race. There is no indication yet that Russian police have targeted minorities using the software developed by the firms - AxxonSoft, Tevian, VisionLabs and NtechLab - whose products are sold to authorities and businesses in the country and abroad. But Moscow-based AxxonSoft said the Thomson Reuters Foundation's enquiry prompted it to disable its ethnicity analytics feature, saying in an emailed response it was not interested "in promoting any technologies that could be a basis for ethnic segregation".