When you think of facial recognition systems, you might think of novelty phone security features that don’t really work as well as they should, or you associate it with privacy concerns where Big Brother could be watching your every move through various CCTVs. While those are likely uses for facial recognition tech, over in China it has helped reunite a family.

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A man from China thought it was a bit strange that he only had very vague memories of his childhood growing up, and because of his suspicions he decided to upload a photo of himself to website called Baobeihuijia. This is a website used in China that helps families reunite with their loved ones who might have been kidnapped when young, and thanks to the use of Baidu’s facial recognition AI, it managed to match the man’s 10-year old photo of himself with a photo that was similarly uploaded by his parents.

Through a DNA test it was ultimately confirmed that they were indeed related and reunited. Prior to this, the website would rely on the help of volunteers who would manually try to match the photos uploaded against each other, but recently Baidu offered their facial recognition services which has been in testing since last November.

The AI has since managed to find a few matches ever since it was put into use, with Baidu boasting a 99.77% accurate rate. Granted it isn’t perfect yet, but we reckon it probably beats humans trying to manually compare photos against each other.

Filed in . Read more about AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Baidu.