Rentokil pilots facial recognition system as way to exterminate rats

The world's largest pest control group is piloting the use of facial recognition software as a way to exterminate rats in people's homes. Rentokil said it had been developing the technology alongside Vodafone for 18 months. The surveillance technology, which is already being tested in real homes, tracks the rodents' habits and streams real-time analysis using artificial intelligence. A central command centre can then help to decide where and how to kill the rats caught on camera. Rentokil's chief executive, Andy Ransom, told the Financial Times: "With facial recognition technology you can see that rat number one behaved differently from rat number three.