Facial recognition will change the face of life

With facial recognition technology, everything from payment to entertainment and grocery shopping has become more futuristic and personalized.

The growing implementation of facial recognition technology in China has made headlines across the world, as the country emerges as a hot spot for such cutting-edge technology, and the wider AI sector.

A wide range of areas are set to use and benefit from the technology: security, telecommunications, banking, and many others are all seeing the potential of the new technology. At the same time, facial recognition is also being used in drone and self-driving car manufacturing.

Facial recognition is not only benefiting a broad spectrum of business sectors, it is also helping local authorities to enforce the law and create a smart traffic control transport system.

In the 2017 list of ten breakthrough technologies compiled by the MIT Technology Review, facial recognition was given top mention, one of the first homegrown technologies to receive such an acknowledgement. This indicates that China's facial recognition industry, led by Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, is leading the race on the global scene.

According to Forward Industry Research Institute, a business think tank, China's facial recognition market is predicted to grow by up to 25 percent every year over the next five years, reaching around 800 million US dollars by 2021.

(CGTN)