A Chinese man who was separated from his parents as a child has found his family thanks to an online facial recognition system.

Fu Gui, 33, was re-connected with his birth parents on April 1 after using 'Baby Come Home', a Chinese website that helps people find their missing children.

The website employs a facial recognition system which matches the portraits submitted by parents who are looking for their missing children and people who are trying to find their parents.

This is the first time in China a missing child and their parents have been re-connected with the help of facial recognition technology.

Fu Gui posted a picture of himself when he was 10 (right) onto 'Baby Come Home' while his family posted a picture of Fu Gui when he was four (left). The two were a match

Fu Gui was having a video call with his long last family after the two parties were re-connected

The cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technology was developed by Baidu, China's answer to Google, and has been used by 'Baby Come Home'.

The system was launched on 'Baby Come Home' in March and contains thousands of pictures of missing children across the country.

According to a report on Huanqiu.com, an affiliation to People's Daily Online, Fu Gui's father, Fu Guangyou, and his family members had not stopped looking for him in the past 27 years.

As his father recalled, Fu Gui was born in Chongqing, south-west China, in 1984 and went missing in 1990.

In a bid to find his son, the man uploaded Fu Gui's information to 'Baby Come Home' and attached a picture of Fu Gui when he was little.

In 2009, Fu Gui, who was also looking for his family, registered on the same website and uploaded a childhood picture of himself.

The man had been renamed Hu Kui by his adoptive parents.

On his profile, Fu Gui stated that he was born in 1986 and he was separated from his parents in 1991.

Initially, 'Baby Come Home' failed to match the two parties due to the different information that had been put in.

However, Fu Gui and his family's fate was changed after 'Baby Come Home' started using Baidu's facial recognition technology.

Baidu's AI-based cross-age facial recognition system analysed and compared facial features

Fu's father (back, middle) has been searching for his missing son for nearly 30 years

Fu Gui's biological family from Chongqing were excited when a DNA test confirmed the match

With the help of Baidu's AI technology, 'Baby Come Home' is able to quickly analyse the 60,000 pictures in its database.

Using the system, the system would first compare the faces in the target and source images, then chooses 30 profiles that best fit the descriptions.

In Fu Gui's case, his childhood picture was chosen by the system to be one of the 30 that looked most like Hu Kui.

'The first look we had on Fu Gui's profile, we had a feeling that it might be him. Not only did they look alike in pictures, their names are also quite similar,' said one of the staff at 'Baby Come Home'.

A DNA test was carried out on April 1 to compare Fu Gui's biological information with his parents. The test confirmed that the two parties were a match.

The re-connection of the Fu Gui and his parents marked the first case in China for a missing child and their family to be matched with the help of facial recognition technology.

The AI system is set to bring new hope to the nation, where millions of children have been abducted and separated from their families.