Wang Yuheng, who won China's 'The Brain' last year, beats AIipay AI in facial recognition contest. (Photo : YouTube)

Wang Yuheng, who is famous in China for his exceptional memory and observation skills, won against artificial intelligence (AI) robot "Mark" in a three-round facial recognition challenge.



The live challenge, according to International Business Times, was a publicity stunt held by the largest digital payment service in China, Alipay. Alipay has just launched "Mark," a facial recognition AI feature for its service.




Alipay invited Wang, who rose to fame after joining and winning Chinese reality television contest "The Brain" in 2014, to a face-off with Mark.



The first two rounds of the contest required Wang and Mark to identify celebrities who were livestreaming on iPhones in the studio from 150, then 300, photographs that were shown on an electronic board. Wang and Mark tied in both rounds.



In the third round, the two contestants were tasked to match the childhood photos to additional livestreaming celebrities. This time, the Beijing-based Wang beat the robot.



IBT cited Chen Jidong, senior data expert at Ant Financial, which owns Alipay, as having told technology news site TechNode that they wanted to see how superhuman recognition abilities, like that of Wang's, would be like compared to a machine's. He said that they want to incorporate these special recognition abilities into their own algorithm so that their AI can serve users more conveniently and more safely in the future.



Mark was developed by Megvii, Inc. According to a report by Quartz, Megvii claims that this new AI feature employed by Alipay is able to identify and authenticate users with a 99.5 percent accuracy rate, which surpasses human ability.



After winning "The Brain," which is China's version of the German reality show "Super Brain," 34-year-old Wang started consulting with the Shandong province police, helping the authorities identify suspects in unsolved cases by getting clues from surveillance camera footages.



Meanwhile, developers are still working to improve Mark. Yet, Quartz pointed that one thing is certain: things are looking up for AI. It also cited Research and Markets as estimating that the global market for facial recognition technology will be reaching $20 billion by the year 2025.

