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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to

journalists, experts and long-time China watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more.

There'll be a smattering of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well.

How do the Chinese see these issues?

Facial recognition. It's the up-and-coming technology that's already become almost part and parcel of our Western modern life.

You can use it to open your phone, you can use it to access your online banking,

and you might have even noticed that your photo album on your phone is capable of recognising your face

and distinguishing it from that of your loved

ones by categorizing them through your past pictures. But what does a technology like this

become when it's implemented in China? Already we are seeing signs of overuse, but also we are

seeing signs of a backlash, a civil backlash happening in the courts, in social media,

and in public opinion at large, against facial recognition.

So that's the topic of this episode of Chinese Whispers.

And with me to discuss are Jeffrey Ding.

He's a defile researcher in AI at the University of Oxford, together with Jeremy Dome,

senior research scholar in law and senior fellow at the

Paul Tai China Centre at Yale Law School, who also runs the blog China Law Translate, which

well, translates Chinese law into English. So welcome Jeremy and Jeff. Jeff, maybe you can start

by painting a picture of how your average Chinese citizen

comes into contact with facial recognition in their everyday lives. Yeah, so from a technical

landscape, the technology has just exploded in terms of the capabilities. So getting from 90% to 99% accuracy is not just a quantitative leap. It's a

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