LG Corporation’s IT services subsidiary is now testing artificial intelligence-based facial recognition technology which allows users to conduct payments using digital currency.

LG CNS used its employees to test the new facial recognition service, IT Times reported on April 23. The platform includes AI, blockchain, and cloud technologies. After identifying an employee, the system enables them to automatically pay for services and products at the corporate restaurant with a pre-registered blockchain-based community currency.

Lee Joon-won, solution business development manager at LG CNS, said: "It is expected that blockchain-based community currency will be used by a lot more people as it becomes more convenient when it meets AI. As non-face-to-face technologies are applied recently, blockchain that increases transaction reliability will be used more widely."

LG CNS’s big plans for blockchain

LG CNS has been experimenting with the system since March, but it is not the only blockchain-based solution the company has developed. Last July, the company revealed plans to deploy blockchain to foster supply chain transparency for school cafeteria lunches.

The data on blockchain was set to include information on products’ production, processing, distribution, acquisition, and consumption — all of which are recorded on the blockchain and made publicly available.

In November of last year, LG CNS partnered with the blockchain subsidiary of internet provider, Kakao, to develop mutually compatible infrastructure. “We will break down the existing boundaries between private and public blockchains through this partnership and combine our strengths for new business opportunities,” an LG representative shared the company’s plans, at the time.

A dubious approach?

Such an approach may seem convenient, especially as it doesn’t require unnecessary contact between devices and people during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic. However, it could raise some concerns.

Trent Lapinski, a hacker and technology executive, previously wrote that with a few tweaks of code, blockchain can be corrupted by authoritarians to build social credit enslavement systems. Matched with 5G, advances in surveillance technology, autonomous drones, facial recognition systems, and artificial intelligence, blockchain can be used as the underlying infrastructure to crush privacy and freedom once and for all.