Ant International Wins Champion of NeurIPS Competition of Fairness in AI Face Detection

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 7, 2025--

Ant International, a leading global digital payment, digitisation, and financial technology provider, has won first place at the NeurIPS Competition of Fairness in AI Face Detection.

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AI Fairness enhances Financial Security

Studies by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) show that many commercial facial recognition algorithms have significantly higher error rates for women and people of colour largely due to underrepresentation in datasets AI algorithms are trained on. Biased algorithms lead to unfair denials of service and create security vulnerabilities.

The competition at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, among the world’s most prestigious AI conferences, challenged participants to develop AI models that not only achieve high-utility performance but also demonstrate fairness across demographic subgroups such as gender, age, and skin tone. Ant International emerged first among over 2,100 submissions from 162 teams across the world at the competition. These teams were tasked to detect 1.2 million AI-generated face pictures of humans from different demographic groups.

By combining a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture with an internal "bias-detection" mechanism, Ant International's winning AI model trains competing neural sub-networks – one focused on spotting deepfakes, the other actively challenging it to ignore sensitive traits. This dynamic ensures the system learns to detect only genuine signs of manipulation, not demographic patterns. Trained on globally representative data including real-world payment fraud scenarios, the model delivers robust and equitable performance at scale.

“A biased AI is an insecure AI,” said Dr. Tianyi Zhang, General Manager of Risk Management and Cybersecurity at Ant International. “Our model’s fairness prevents exploitation from deepfakes and ensures reliable identity verification for all users, supporting our mission to deliver secure and inclusive financial services worldwide.”

Applications in Financial Services

Ant International is integrating the NeurIPS-winning technology directly into its payment and financial services to counter deepfake threats and ensure consistent customer experience globally.

Full-cycle security strategy to protect financial transactions

Ant International alongside its partners serve over 150 million merchants and 1.8 billion user accounts worldwide. These services include global wallet gateway Alipay+, merchant payment services Antom, inclusive finance and credit tech services Bettr and global account services WorldFirst.

Ant International has positioned AI security at the core of its operations. It has introduced the AI SHIELD, as a comprehensive, full-lifecycle foundational framework for risk management. Built on the AI Security Docker, this solution reduces risk of AI service vulnerabilities such as unauthorised access and data leakage by 90% through advanced assessment methods and running safeguards.

Risk-management solutions secured by AI SHIELD provide full-lifecycle protection of transactions at Ant International. These solutions protect businesses and users from deepfake attacks, frauds and scams. For instance, account protection solution Alipay+ EasySafePay 360 can reduce account takeover incidence for digital wallet payments by 90%.

About Ant International

With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider. Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, our unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions. To learn more, please visit https://www.ant-intl.com/

Ant International’s solution takes top spot at the NeurIPS Competition of Fairness in AI Face Detection, emerging first among over 2,100 submissions from 162 teams globally.

GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.'s humanitarian aid coordination office is downsizing its appeal for annual funding in 2026 after support this year, mostly from Western governments, plunged to the lowest level in a decade.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Monday it was seeking $33 billion to help some 135 million people cope with fallout from wars, climate disasters, earthquakes, epidemics and food shortages. This year, it took in $15 billion, the lowest level in a decade.

The office says next year it wants more than $4.1 billion to reach 3 million people in Palestinian areas, another $2.9 billion for Sudan — home to the world's largest displacement crisis — and $2.8 billion for a regional plan around Syria.

“In 2025, hunger surged. Food budgets were slashed — even as famines hit parts of Sudan and Gaza. Health systems broke apart," said OCHA chief Tom Fletcher. "Disease outbreaks spiked. Millions went without essential food, healthcare and protection. Programs to protect women and girls were slashed, hundreds of aid organizations shut."

The U.N. aid coordinator sought $47 billion for this year and aimed to help 190 million people worldwide. Because of the lower support, it and humanitarian partners reached 25 million fewer people this year than in 2024.

“I know budgets are tight right now. Families everywhere are under strain," Fletcher said. “But the world spent $2.7 trillion on defense last year – on guns and arms. And I’m asking for just over 1% of that.”

He has called for “radical transformation” of aid by reducing bureaucracy, boosting efficiency and giving more power to local groups. Fletcher cited “very practical, constructive conversations” almost daily with the Trump administration.

“Do I want to shame the world into responding? Absolutely," Fletcher said. "But I also want to channel this sense of determination and anger that we have as humanitarians, that we will carry on delivering with what we get.”

FILE - A convoy of vehicles loaded with food and other aid is en route to Sweida on the international highway in rural Daraa province, Syria, July 20, 2025, heading to the city of Busra al-Sham. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki, File)

FILE - Palestinians grab sacks of flour from a moving truck carrying World Food Programme aid as it drives through Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)

FILE - People carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid that was unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)

FILE - Women displaced from El-Fasher stand in line to receive food aid at the newly established El-Afadh camp in Al Dabbah, in Sudan's Northern State, Nov. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Marwan Ali, File)