Alibaba was found to have developed and offered facial recognition technology capable of identifying Uyghur individuals as part of its cloud services.

The technology allowed users to send photographs or surveillance video footage to Alibaba's facial recognition service, which would then alert them if a subject was identified as a Uyghur minority from Xinjiang. 

The feature, which was discovered within Alibaba Cloud's Cloud Shield content moderation system, was marketed as part of Alibaba Cloud's offerings, alongside other capabilities like "glasses inspection" and "smile detection".

After the revelation, Alibaba quickly removed mentions of Uyghur and minority detection from its website and claimed the feature was only used in a "testing environment" and not deployed for any customers. 

The discovery of the tool raised concerns about Alibaba's role in Beijing's crackdown on the Uyghurs in China. The incident also highlighted the broader issue of surveillance and oppression of Uyghur minorities.

Multiple technology companies have been implicated in developing tools that aid in the government's crackdown on the ethnic group.