US FCC Bans First Two Devices Under New Chip-Level Rule Over Huawei Subsidiary AI Face Detection

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently enforced a new regulatory rule that allows it to ban devices based on their internal chips rather than final product brands or models. This move aims to close loopholes where products are rebranded to circumvent restrictions on components from Chinese manufacturers. According to Tom's Hardware, the FCC has used this new rule for the first time to prohibit the sale and marketing of two devices in the US: a dashboard camera and a wireless video transmitter.

These devices were banned because they contain the HiSilicon Smart Vision System-on-Chip (SoC), which features built-in face detection algorithms. HiSilicon, a subsidiary of Huawei, is on the FCC’s Covered List of entities deemed to pose a risk to US national security. The report identifies the specific chip as the Hi3516CV610 UHD Smart Vision, designed for vehicle dashcams and wireless CCTV systems.

The SoC includes a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI capabilities. The FCC expressed concern over these logic-bearing “smart” components produced by entities on the Covered List. HiSilicon’s datasheet indicates that the Intelligent Video Engine (IVE) uses the NPU to run a built-in multimodal large model and transformer feature acceleration, enabling the understanding of object relationships across video frames to identify pets, faces, human figures, and parcels. While the vendor markets this as helping distinguish between a pet escaping and a parcel theft, the FCC believes the AI chip could be used to survey US citizens and log faces for foreign surveillance purposes.