War in Ukraine: facial recognition to counter Russian propaganda

Ukrainian soldiers carry a dead soldier through the debris in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, on March 19, 2022. AFP - BULENT KILIC

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The Ukrainian government has decided to identify fallen enemy soldiers and notify their families in Russia.

To do this, kyiv says it uses facial recognition software. 

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Russia acknowledged this Friday, March 25 the death of 1,351 of its soldiers since the start of the invasion in Ukraine.

The previous report was dated March 2.

It reported 498 dead.

This rare communication on Russian losses constitutes one of the facets of Vladmir Putin's narrative which claims not to be waging a war in Ukraine, but a "special operation". 

A “myth” that the Ukrainian authorities intend to dispel thanks to artificial intelligence.

Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Wednesday that his country was using this technology to compare the profiles of Russian soldiers on social networks to photos of their remains and to notify relatives of their death.

The facial recognition system in question was developed by Clearview AI.

This American company offered its services free of charge to the government of kyiv.

She says her database has two billion images from VK, the Russian equivalent of Facebook. 

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So much for the theory.

But in practice, the use of facial recognition as a tool of war poses several problems.

Beyond the questions around the protection of privacy, experts warn that the risk of error with this technology is considerable.

Battlefield injuries in particular are likely to greatly alter facial features.

Errors in the identification of the dead will then be inevitable.

However, announcing the death of a Russian soldier to his family while he is alive poses a real ethical dilemma, believe the specialists. 

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