Following reports about Chinese-based company Alibaba spying on Uighur minorities, the e-commerce giant broke its silence and addressed the rumor once and for all.
In a statement to Alizila, Alibaba said that it was "dismayed" that Alibaba Cloud developed facial recognition technology that includes ethnicity as an attribute for tagging video imagery. In short, the tech firm never intended the technology to be used in such a shady manner.
"We never intended our technology to be used for and will not permit it to be used for targeting specific ethnic groups, and we have eliminated any ethnic tag in our product offering. This trial technology was not deployed by any customer. We do not and will not permit our technology to be used to target or identify specific ethnic group," the statement reads.
Nasty Accusation
The accusation as China vehemently denied its controversial "vocational training programs" forced upon its ethnic minorities, including Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and others, and most of them are Muslims.
Research from IPVM and The New York Times reveals that the company's Chinese website blatantly showed clients how to build into the cloud service and identify ethnic minorities using facial recognition technology.
"An Alibaba Cloud China's API guide lists "is it Uyghur" (是否是维族) as one of several 'face attributes' it can detect," the report reads.
That said, this technology could help the government cracking down on Uighurs, which, despite their vehement denial, they have been doing so for years. Just for information, Alibaba owns YouKu, one of the country's top video-sharing platforms, and Weibo, a Chinese-based social media, also uses the firm's cloud technology.
However, Alibaba also claimed that the technology is only used for testing and has never been implemented in real life nor taken out of the context. The 'ethnicity' part refers to a feature used during "an exploration of our technical capability. It was never used outside the testing environment."
As the report from IPVM and The New York Post surfaced, the company quickly pulled off the page where it blatantly says "Uighurs."
However, the ethnic minorities detection is not mentioned on Alibaba's international website, meaning that this technology is only used in the Chinese mainland.
Big Names to Stand Up
Unfortunately, this is not the first time that a Chinese-based tech giant is thrown under the bus for reportedly aiding the government in discriminating against its Muslim minorities.
A report from the same website earlier this month also highlighted Huawei not too long ago, saying that the smartphone giant uses such facial recognition technology to identify Uighur minorities.
FC Barcelona starlet and French international Antoine Griezmann had developed a strong suspicion and decided to cut his commercial ties with Huawei following the report.
