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Apple has been accused of racism, amid reports that the Face ID authentication technology on its new iPhone X is failing to distinguish between Chinese users.

A man from Shanghai bought his wife the new gadget soon after it was released last month, but she was shocked to discover it could be unlocked by her teenage son.

The man, identified only by his surname Liu, reported the issue to Apple's customer services. He was told it was an isolated case and was due to the fact his wife and son look very similar.

"Our son was using it and didn't know the password," he said, according to Shandong TV Station .

Apple has reportedly launched an investigation into the Liu family's claims.

(Image: AsiaWire)

This is not the first reported incident of Chinese users being able to unlock each other's iPhone Xs.

Last week, AsiaOne reported that a woman from Nanjing discovered her colleague - who is not related to her - was able to unlock her phone using Face ID.

When Madam Yan first called Apple to complain about the problem, the customer service representative told her it was "impossible".

However, when she and her colleague took the phone into an Apple store to prove what had happened, they were able to replicate the issue on a second iPhone X.

(Image: AsiaWire) (Image: CEN)

"We look quite ordinary. What if someone picks up my phone and opens it?" said Madam Yan's colleague, Madam Wan.

"Then they could buy stuff through my phone and make payments. We don't have any sense of security."

The incidents have led to claims of racism on social media, with some blaming the lack of ethnic diversity in the technology industry:

Others accused Apple of only testing Face ID on white people:

Apple claims to have worked with iPhone users all over the world to ensure the product is accessible to people of different ethnicities.

"We worked with participants from around the world to include a representative group of people accounting for gender, age, ethnicity, and other factors," said Cynthia Hogan , Apple's vice president of public policy for the Americas, in October.

"We augmented the studies as needed to provide a high degree of accuracy for a diverse range of users."

The company's support page states that the probability that a random person in the population could look at your iPhone X and unlock it using Face ID is approximately one in a million. However, there are some caveats.

(Image: AsiaWire)

If you have a twin or a sibling who looks very similar to you, the probability of a false match is higher.

It is also higher for children under the age of 13, because their distinct facial features may not have fully developed, according to Apple.

An Apple spokesman told the Huffington Post that he couldn't confirm the details of the story, nor did he have enough information to determine what might have gone wrong with the phones.

He suspected that both women may have used the phone during its "passcode training" and that the phones may have been essentially "taught" to recognise both faces.