Facial recognition aids police efforts

Alongside colorful cosplay characters and futuristic robots, this year's World Artificial Intelligence Conference also played host to several AI companies taking the opportunity to show how technology can be used to support good causes.

Tencent Holdings Ltd is assisting Chinese police to track and identify missing children through its indigenous facial recognition technologies. A substantial step was achieved in June when four children who had been missing for a decade were located using the technology.

"Based on a photo of a baby, cross-age facial recognition technology is able to predict changes in facial features to help track a person down," said Wu Yunsheng, general manager of Tencent's YouTu Lab, which focuses on computer vision research.