Fu Gui, 33, was re-connected with his birth parents after using 'Baby Come Home', a Chinese website that helps people find their missing children. Thanks to an online facial recognition system.

    This is the first time in China a missing child and their parents have been re-connected with the help of facial recognition technology. The cutting-edge artificial intelligence(AI) technology(人工智能技术)was developed by Baidu, and has been used by 'Baby Come Home.' The system was launched on 'Baby Come Home' in March and contains thousands of pictures of missing children across the country.

    Fu Guis family members had never stopped looking for him in the past 27 years. As his father recalled, Fu Gui was born in Chongqing in 1984 and went missing in 1990. To find his son, the man uploaded Fu Gui's information to 'Baby Come Home' with a picture of Fu Gui when he was four. In 2009, Fu Gui also started looking for his family, registered (注册) on the same website and uploaded a childhood picture of himself at the age of ten.

    With the help of Baidu's AI technology, 'Baby Come Home' was able to quickly analyse the 60,000 pictures in its database(数据库). The system would first compare the faces in the target and source images, then choose 30 profiles (侧面像) that best fit the descriptions. In Fu Gui's case, his childhood picture was chosen by the system to be one of the 30 that looked most like Fu Gui.

    A DNA test was carried out to compare Fu Gui's biological information with his parents. The test confirmed that the two parties were a match. The re-connection of the Fu Gui and his parents marked the first case in China for a missing child and their family to be matched with the help of facial recognition technology. We think more and more missing children will find the family to their birth parents.