S.Korea to test AI-powered facial recognition to track Covid-19 cases

South Korea will soon roll out a pilot project to use artificial intelligence, facial recognition and thousands of CCTV cameras to track the movement of people infected with the coronavirus, despite concerns about the invasion of privacy.

The nationally funded project in Bucheon, one of the country's most densely populated cities on the outskirts of Seoul, is due to become operational in January, a city official told Reuters.

The system uses an AI algorithms and facial recognition technology to analyse footage gathered by more than 10,820 CCTV cameras and track an infected person's movements, anyone they had close contact with, and whether they were wearing a mask, according to a 110-page business plan from the city submitted to the Ministry of Science and ICT (Information and Communications Technology), and provided to Reuters by a parliamentary lawmaker critical of the project.

Governments around the world have turned to new technologies and expanded legal powers to try to stem the tide of COVID-19 infections. China, Russia, India, Poland and Japan as well as several U.S. states are among the governments to have rolled out or at least experimented with facial recognition systems for tracking COVID-19 patients, according to a March report by Columbia Law School in New York.

The Bucheon official said the system should reduce the strain on overworked tracing teams in a city with a population of more than 800,000 people, and help use the teams more efficiently and accurately.

South Korea already has an aggressive, high-tech contact tracing system that harvests credit card records, cellphone location data and CCTV footage, among other personal information.

It still relies, however, on a large number of epidemiological investigators, who often have to work 24-hour shifts, frantically tracing and contacting potential coronavirus cases.

In bidding for national funding for the pilot project in late 2020, Bucheon mayor Jang Deog-cheon argued that such a system would make tracing faster.

"It sometimes takes hours to analyse a single CCTV footage. Using visual recognition technology will enable that analysis in an instant," he said on Twitter.

The system is also designed to overcome the fact that tracing teams have to rely heavily on the testimony of Covid-19 patients, who aren't always truthful about their activities and whereabouts, the plan said.