As the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak becomes a global health hazard, Chinese tech giant Baidu is doing its bit to help in the battle against the deadly virus with AI.

Baidu has open-sourced a face-scanning model that uses AI to detect if users are wearing masks or not, as reported by TechNode.

The Chinese government has already made it mandatory for citizens to wear masks in all public places. The government is taking all possible steps to control the spread of the virus, which can be transmitted through close contact with an infected person.

As masks could be an effective way of curbing it, Baidu’s tool helps identify in real-time those who are not wearing masks or even those who fail to wear them correctly. Boasting 96.5% accuracy, the AI model has been trained on a dataset of 100,000 faces.

The system can also help businesses check if their employees are wearing masks and also help authorities speed up mask checks in public places, the TechNode report said.