Facial recognition system mistakes bus ad for jaywalker
China's surveillance picked up a celebrity's face by accident.
A facial recognition system in China mistook a bus ad for a jaywalker.
China is increasingly dependent on facial recognition systems to name and shame citizens who jaywalk, but it reportedly hit a snag this week.
A camera at an intersection in the eastern city of Ningbo named famous businesswoman Dong Mingzhu as a jaywalker after catching her face on the side of passing bus, Chinese tech site Abacus reported.
The city's traffic police admitted the error in a post on microblogging site Weibo, saying the infraction had been deleted and the system was upgraded to prevent that problem from happening again, without offering specifics.
Dong Mingzhu is the chair of Gree Electric Appliances, China's biggest air conditioner manufacturer, which thanked Ningbo police and urged people to obey traffic rules, according to South China Morning Post.
There are around 200 million surveillance cameras deployed in China, and Abacus noted that nearly 14,000 jaywalkers were named and shamed at one Shenzhen intersection over a 10-month period.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Chinese authorities have started using "gait recognition" software -- artificial intelligence that identifies people by their walk -- in Beijing and Shanghai.