According to a June 28 report by France's Le Monde, advances in artificial intelligence (AI), particularly face recognition systems, have become crucial tools for authoritarian regimes to monitor citizens and suppress dissent. Most of these systems are supplied by China.

The report reveals how the Chinese Communist Party, Georgia, and Russia are utilizing Chinese-made AI face recognition technology to enhance surveillance of citizens and dissidents. The Communist Party is leveraging subsidies to promote the development of related AI surveillance technologies and is exporting them unconditionally to authoritarian states around the world.

For instance, in Georgia, weeks of anti-government protests have been occurring in the capital Tbilisi, where protesters wore exaggerated masks and large glasses to conceal their identities to evade the facial recognition surveillance systems installed throughout the city by Georgian authorities since the protests began in November of last year. In Russia, the installation of over a million surveillance cameras has expanded, with about half of them equipped with face recognition capabilities. Following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Moscow authorities have further invested in surveillance systems, which were recently used to monitor and assist in the arrest of attendees at the funeral of well-known dissident Alexei Navalny.

The report also notes that since the establishment of the "Skynet" surveillance system by the Chinese Communist Party in 2005, and the launch of the face recognition-centric "Sharp Eyes" program in 2016, these initiatives have not only strengthened surveillance of ethnic minorities and dissidents in Xinjiang but also positioned China as the world's largest exporter of facial recognition technology, becoming a tool for authoritarian regimes to suppress dissent.