FCC issues first bans under new chip-level rule
FCC bans a dashcam and wireless video transmitter produced by HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei for containing an AI chip that advertises face detection algorithms.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued its first bans under a new rule governing chip-level restrictions. This regulation enables the FCC to ban devices based on their internal chips rather than individual products or brands. Previously, the FCC could only ban devices listed on US export restriction lists or those rebranded with components from Chinese manufacturers.
As a result of this new mandate, the FCC has prohibited two devices from sale and marketing within the United States for the first time: a dashboard camera and a wireless video transmitter. The Verge reports that these devices were banned due to the presence of HiSilicon Smart Vision SoCs (System on a Chip) within them. HiSilicon is a subsidiary of Huawei, and both the firm and its subsidiaries are listed on the FCC's Covered List of entities posing a risk to US national security.
The Hi3516CV610 UHD Smart Vision SoC is specifically designed for surveillance and camera products. It comes equipped with WiFi, Ethernet, video encoding chips, an Arm Cortex-A7 processor, and an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for AI features. The NPU is of particular concern to the FCC, as it contains "smart" components produced by entities on the Covered List.
On its data sheet, the Intelligent Video Engine (IVE) utilizes the NPU to run a built-in dedicated multimodal large model and transformer feature acceleration. This technology enables the AI model to understand relationships between objects in video frames, such as pets, human faces, and other entities, allowing for more nuanced object recognition.
The FCC believes this AI logic in the SoC could be used for invasive surveillance of US citizens, monitoring their faces and potentially logging them for foreign entities. This concern follows a previous Huawei scandal where it allegedly used shell companies to deceive Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) into producing AI chips for Huawei, despite the US requesting TSMC to refrain from supplying chips to several Chinese customers.
Written by urgent.news from Tom's Hardware's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
