KFC China is using facial recognition tech to serve customers – but are they buying it?
Beijing KFC is pioneering technology to try to predict and remember peoples fast food choices but theres a trade off between convenience and privacy
Walking into the KFC restaurant in Beijings financial district, youd be forgiven for thinking it was a fried chicken outlet like any other. Its only if you head right to the back corner of the shop that you realise youre actually in Chinas first smart restaurant.
KFC has teamed up with Baidu the search engine company often referred to as Chinas Google to develop facial-recognition technology that can be used to predict customers orders.
Explaining the idea, a spokesperson for KFC said: The artificial intelligence-enabled system can recommend menu items based on a customers estimated age and mood. A press release from Baidu added that a male customer in his early 20s would be offered a set meal of crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and coke, while a female customer in her 50s would get a recommendation of porridge and soybean milk for breakfast.
So, steeled for some patronisingly gendered suggestions of salad or maybe a small portion of chips, I headed over to try the restaurant of the future for myself. A male customer service assistant in his 20s demonstrated the machine for me, and was indeed offered a chicken hamburger set meal. I stood in position, and was read as being female (correct), beautiful (correct) and in my 30s (only a decade off). On this basis, I was also recommended a chicken hamburger meal. If you dont agree with the suggestion, you can click through to see some alternatives. In other words, it shows you the menu, but shorter. Once youre happy with your choice, you can pay with your mobile phone at the machine, and collect your meal moments later at the counter.
Despite being billed as artificial intelligence, the technology is more about convenience and publicity at this stage of development. The digitalisation of the restaurant will also help to provide faster and easier services, said Zhao Li, general manager of Beijing KFC.
Customers, however, seem less convinced. Its very interesting, but most people will choose the more familiar way, said Dione Xiong, a 21-year-old KFC regular. Shes right as the lunchtime throng pours in, not one person gives the machine a second or even first glance, preferring instead to wait longer in line and order from the human attendants.
Li Jiang Wei, a middle-aged office worker, agrees to test the machine for me, and is offered a meal of chicken soup with rice: Its what I ate yesterday, but I didnt like it.
If it knows in future what I want to eat thats great, but at the moment its not very smart.
KFC and Baidu hope that they will be able to know what customers will want in future. KFC has said it wants to provide a personalised ordering experience by recalling repeat customers and their orders. However, when I go back a few days later to try out the machine again, though it reads the same characteristics from my face it doesnt remember my preferences. Instead, it offers me a variety of breakfast items, apparently tailoring my recommendations to the time of day rather than to the customer. At the breakfast rush, the machine is no busier than at lunch, most customers again preferring to order at the counter.
Of course, the prospect of a company storing data about customers faces and fried-chicken preferences raises the ever present trade-off between convenience and privacy. One woman tells me she wouldnt use the machine for that reason, but most customers are nonplussed. In China, you dont have any privacy anyway, said Li.
Hes right, sort of. Beyond the world of fast-food, personal data in China is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. A Chinese newspaper recently conducted an experiment, which found that a citizens private data, including apartments theyd rented and internet cafs theyd visited, could be bought using their personal ID number at the cost of just 700RMB (82). Meanwhile, the government is rolling out a social credit system of digitally stored information about a persons credit history, consumption habits and incidences of conduct that seriously undermines the normal social order. The system also awards points for good behaviour; a persons point score affects their ability to travel abroad, buy property and enrol their children in certain schools, among other privileges.
Its unlikely that a persons lunchtime KFC order will determine whether or not they get a mortgage. KFC has stressed that the data it collects is highly secured and will not be used for other purposes. But with facial recognition technology planned to be expanded to KFCs 5,000 stores around China, and potentially normalised into other public-facing services, its a glimpse into a future where nothing is private, not even your guilty eating habits.