Statement from Alibaba Group Regarding Recent Reports of the Company’s Facial Recognition Technology
Racial or ethnic discrimination or profiling in any form violates Alibabaβs policies and values. We are dismayed to learn that Alibaba Cloud developed a facial recognition technology in a testing environment that included ethnicity as an algorithm attribute for tagging video imagery. 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 groups.