the Party has given China’s top four facial recognition firms access to its database of over 1.4 billion citizen photos. One well-informed venture capitalist in

the Party has given China’s top four facial recognition firms access to its database of over 1.4 billion citizen photos. One well-informed venture capitalist in this arena estimates that Chinese facial recognition firms have one million times more images than their U.S. counterparts. That doesn't sound right. 1.4b photos is nothing compared to facebook and google. Facebook + Instagram has 2.3b + 1b active users and each one uploads tons of photos. Facebook uses these for facial recognition. Google owns Android (2.5b active users).. and if you've enabled face auth, Android is sending your photo to google to be analyzed. They could also use Google Photos and Youtube videos (although I don't know that they do). Amazon owns Rekognition.. and if you're using it, they're taking the photos you process with it and using it for training. They're used by law enforcement and a variety of companies, and I'd be willing to bet they have more than 1.4b photos. These are probably better data sets for training too.. since they show people in the real world vs China's ID photo database of people posing for a photo.