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.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251207210856/en/

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.

SALLA, Finland (AP) — Traditional reindeer racing that's been delighting spectators for decades in Finland brought hundreds of fans to the Salla Reindeer Cup in the town of Salla this past weekend.

Around 1,000 people attended the competition, despite frigid subfreezing temperatures and the remote location near the Russian border, roughly 264 kilometers (164 miles) northeast of the city of Oulu.

They watched and cheered as the reindeer galloped across the snow-covered track, pulling their handlers behind them on skis. Whoever is fastest wins the race.

Spectators came not only from Finland but also Italy, Norway, Germany and France, among other countries.

Reindeer husbandry has been an important part of Scandinavian culture for many decades, especially for the Sami Indigenous people in the far north of the country.

“Salla has a long history in reindeer racing — it’s been going on here since the 1950s,” said Lasse Aatsinki, the head of Salla Reindeer Cup. “Back then, men spent winters in the forest, there were no snowmobiles. In late winter, the reindeer were in great shape, so they started racing them.”

These days, reindeer racing is an organized and regulated competition with trained male reindeer.

The premiere event was the so-called hot series, in which reindeer qualify if they race the kilometer-long (just over a half-mile) track in 1 minute, 19 seconds, or less. Only the fastest reindeer get to compete in this race.

“It’s a science. A lot depends on the reindeer’s character — it has to tolerate a lot: the audience, other reindeer, noise, movement,” Aatsinki said. “Everyone has their tricks — and they’re usually kept under the fur hat. Every owner has their own way.”

During the race, crowds cheered their favorites on with calls of “hyvä, hyvä” and “mene, mene” — which is Finnish for “good, good” and “go, go” — as the reindeer sprinted down the final stretch.

In between races, people kept warm with reindeer soup and kampanisu, a traditional local pastry specialty from Salla.

The competition culminated Sunday with the final rounds and it was reindeer named Pompom which won the final race.

“Pompom is exceptionally fast and smart, and you rarely find one like that,” said Hannu Krupula, the winning animal's owner.

“If there’s any weakness, it’s that it’s not very good-looking — which can be misleading,” he added.

“When you look at that reindeer, you might quickly think it’s poorly fed or something. But it eats well. It’s a rare individual.”

And thus after the race, Pompom and all the other reindeer got their own reward — lichen, a symbiotic, colorful organism that grows on trees or rocks, and is the animals' favorite treat.

A reindeer breaks away from the pack during the Salla Porocup reindeer sprint racing event on the frozen Lake Keselmajarvi in Salla, Finland, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)

A reindeer handler guides an eager reindeer to the starting area during the Salla Porocup reindeer sprint racing event in Salla, Finland, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)

A reindeer breaks away from the pack during the Salla Porocup reindeer sprint racing event on the frozen Lake Keselmajarvi in Salla, Finland, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)

Reindeer rest in their holding area beneath Sallatunturi fell before the start of reindeer racing at the Salla Porocup sprint racing event in Salla, Finland, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)

A junior competitor bursts out of the starting gate during the Salla Porocup sprint racing event in Salla, Finland, March 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)

Reindeer compete during the Salla Porocup reindeer sprint racing event on the frozen Lake Keselmajarvi in Salla, Finland, March 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Aino Vaananen)