Hong Kong police to add AI facial recognition to CCTV on Nov. 16

Hong Kong police will switch on AI facial recognition across their SmartView CCTV network on November 16. Police Commissioner Joe Chow Yat-ming announced the date after a police college graduation parade on November 14. In a TVB interview the following day, he said officers would need prior approval to use the feature. He named criminal investigations and searches for missing people as its main uses. Police gave a date for the launch without specifying an hour.

Police had said earlier in November that facial recognition would arrive sometime that month. At a November 6 briefing, officers described the intended uses as active criminal searches and efforts to locate high-risk missing people. SmartView already had an automated way to read vehicle license plates, introduced in July 2025. The new feature adds the ability to analyze faces in footage to help look for people.

Police cameras share the network with other operators

The force recorded 5,000 installed cameras by the end of 2025. By the November 6 briefing, police said they had installed about 10,000 and connected feeds from roughly 10,000 more run by other government departments and public bodies. The locations include the airport, railway stations and public housing estates. The network brings together cameras the police install and feeds supplied by other operators. In his November 15 interview, Chow said the network already included cameras at some shopping malls.

Superintendent Raymond Cheng said at the earlier briefing that police could use the feature on their own cameras and on third-party feeds integrated into SmartView. He said available computing resources limited how many feeds could be analyzed simultaneously. From November 16, police can apply the feature to particular cameras as needed for a search.

Hong Kong’s government set a target of about 60,000 cameras by 2028 in a supplement to its 2025 Policy Address. The plan calls for adding more than 20,000 cameras a year. That target describes the eventual size of the camera network. The number of feeds undergoing facial recognition at a given time depends on which cameras police use in individual searches.

Up to 31 days for video, up to 180 days for facial recognition data

At the November 6 briefing, police set out two retention periods. They said regular CCTV footage would be kept for up to 31 days. Photos of people captured by the facial recognition feature and related information could be kept for up to 180 days. RTHK’s account of the briefing lists where and when an image was captured and facial characteristics among the information covered by that longer period.

Police reported that separate pilot tests helped officers arrest a robbery suspect and locate an elderly man with dementia about an hour and a half after he was reported missing. Those were individual trial cases. Asked about the system at his November 14 appearance, Chow declined to describe its detailed technical capabilities.

Police say their own SmartView installations are aimed at public spaces and that the government posts notices near those cameras. The force’s public guidance gives the owners of integrated third-party cameras discretion over a separate sign that identifies a connection to SmartView. A notice that a site uses CCTV can therefore convey different information from a notice that its feed is part of the police network.

Hong Kong’s privacy regulator issued general CCTV guidance in October 2025. It calls for notices identifying the operator and purpose of the surveillance and says personal data should be kept only as long as that purpose requires. For security recordings, it recommends routine, secure deletion when no incident is discovered or reported. It also recommends keeping records of who accessed the system and where recordings were transferred. Police set out the SmartView retention periods separately at their November 6 briefing.