Chinese authorities are using facial recognition to track its Uyghur Muslim minority across the country, according to the New York Times.

Beijing's use of advanced AI and other surveillance tools to monitor Uyghurs under the guise of maintaining social stability and countering terrorism has been extensively documented outside China.

But the NYT found that Chinese authorities are using AI to target Uyghurs outside Xinjiang, including in wealthy cities like Hangzhou and Wenzhou. 

The newspaper claimed that one central city scanned whether residents were Uyghurs 500,000 times in one month, and that the programme amounted to "automated racism".

The Times cites experts who said this is the first known example of a government intentionally using AI for racial profiling.

As other authoritarian regimes adopt similar systems, often developed in China and "trained" on the country's ethnic and religious minorities, Beijing's export of AI surveillance technologies is seen to pose a major threat to human rights and civil liberties across the world.