KFC, Baidu Team Up On Facial Recognition

Baidu and KFC China are working together on a new “smart restaurant” in Beijing that will use facial recognition and factors such as age, gender and facial expression to suggest things a customer may order.

The technology will be unique to this specific location, but the restaurant will also offer augmented reality games via table stickers, TechCrunch reported. The image recognition offering will scan a customer’s face, looking specifically for information it can use to inform a food recommendation. This can include everything from inferring mood to gender and age data.

According to a press release from Baidu, a young adult male may be recommended a “crispy chicken hamburger, roasted chicken wings and coke” meal for lunch, while a female in her 50s might be suggested “porridge and soybean milk for breakfast.”

The restaurant’s facial recognition kiosks create a database of images and will have the ability to detect and identify repeat customers in order to provide suggestions based on their order history.

Earlier this year, Baidu and KFC China teamed up on a similar smart restaurant pilot location in Shanghai that is focused on offering robot customer service, according to Mashable. The agent uses natural language input to listen for and then recognize food orders.