Facial recognition is now mainstream and available as a service. We (Strateq) are using Amazon’s engine

These 2 articles really sum it up well;

https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21728617-life-age-facial-recognition-what-machines-can-tell-your-face

https://www.economist.com/news/business/21728654-chinas-megvii-has-used-government-collected-data-lead-sector-ever-better-and-cheaper

From a software engineering point of view, facial recognition has 2 values;

1. Auto identification of a user from a biometric property (which is a non transferable token).

2. As part of computer vision which enables software to trigger events and behaviour from observation of a scene, rather than wait for human UID or preprogrammed trigger.