Alibaba says it won't allow its tech to target, identify ethnic groups

Alibaba said it was "dismayed" that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery.

A logo of Alibaba Group is seen at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China, November 18, 2019. REUTERS/Aly Song/Files (REUTERS)

Alibaba Group said it will not allow its technology to be used for targeting and identifying specific ethnic groups, following a report that its facial recognition technology can pick out Uighur minorities.

Alibaba, in a statement, said it was "dismayed" that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery. 

The firm added they never intended the technology to be used in this manner.

"We have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering," Alibaba said.

According to a report in The New York Times, Alibaba's website for its cloud computing business showed how clients could use its software to detect the faces of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities within images and videos, according to pages on the site that were discovered by the surveillance industry publication IPVM and shared with The New York Times. 

This feature was built into Alibaba software that helps web platforms monitor digital content for material related to terrorism, pornography and other red-flag categories, the website said.