China Is Using Facial Recognition On Chickens… As We Predicted

A bit over a month ago, we were talking out loud about facial recognition, in the dawn of Apple’s Face ID. Playing around with the notion, we wondered if the technology could be used to recognize animals, too, for example chickens. Turns out, our theory was not just a clear possibility, but a full on prediction as a company in China is set to use the computational imaging technology exactly like that – to identify chickens #biomagic

Just last month, we were “dissecting” the smartphone camera and its underlying software to see how exactly facial recognition works. If you don’t recall that, here’s a reminder – just go to 0:20 to watch how facial recognition could work with a chicken like our Lucille:

Now, that the concept is more clear, it’s easy to see how a farming insurance company from China plans to implement the technology to identify these birds. The business, part of ZhongAn Online, was the first in the organic farming industry to use blockchain technology to track chickens. The insurtech attached anklets to the birds’ legs for the first six months of their lives so that health-conscious urban consumers could monitor them.

The birds’ whereabouts, as well as their exercise routine, was disclosed to all of them. Now, “GoGo Chicken” can find all that info and more about the chickens they are about to purchase via smartphone app.

But that’s just the beginning. ZhongAn Tech CEO Chen Wei now plans to use facial recognition to help consumers be even more in control of their birds. The idea is to be able to identify and track a specific baby chick and watch it grow on the farm for a period of time before buying it.