In a white paper posted on its website, the US computing giant said policymakers should understand that "not all technology lumped under the umbrella of 'facial recognition' is the same." IBM said uneasiness about artificial intelligence technology which can use face scans for identification was reasonable.

"However, blanket bans on technology are not the answer to concerns around specific use cases," said the paper by IBM chief privacy officer Christina Montgomery and Ryan Hagemann, co-director the IBM policy lab.

"Casting such a wide regulatory net runs the very real risk of cutting us off from the many - and potentially life-saving - benefits these technologies offer."

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2019