Explained | Will facial recognition AI tools help detect telecom fraud?

The story so far: To weed out rampant cases of fraudulently procured SIM cards being used across the country for financial and other cyber scams, the Department of Telecommunications has begun using an artificial intelligence-based facial recognition tool named ‘Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification’. India is the second-largest telecom ecosystem in the world, with about 117 crore subscribers, and while manually identifying and comparing the vast number of subscriber verification documents such as photographs and proofs is a massive exercise, the DoT says it aims to use the facial recognition-based “indigenous and NextGen platform” ASTR to analyse the whole subscriber base of all telecom service providers. The ASTR analyses this database subscriber images provided by TSPs and put them into groups of similar-looking images using facial recognition technology. ASTR’s facial recognition technology detects facial features by mapping 68 features of the frontal face.