CAT 2026: AI-based facial recognition to be used for candidate verification

The Common Admission Test (CAT) 2026 will use artificial intelligence (AI)-based facial recognition to verify candidates’ identities at examination centres for the first time, with the technology being introduced on an experimental basis alongside the existing physical verification process, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore director Himanshu Rai said on Wednesday.

The AI-based system will act as an additional check and will not replace verification through CAT admit cards by examination officials. Candidates will not be denied entry even if the technology fails to recognise their faces, Rai told HT.

“We are not doing it independent of the physical verification. The physical verification will obviously happen that whoever enters, the face will be checked against the admit card. But AI-based facial recognition technology will also get tested as to how accurate it is and whether it needs to be tweaked further for the future,” Rai said.

IIM Indore is organising CAT 2026, which will be conducted on November 29 in three sessions across more than 350 examination centres in approximately 170 cities. The results are likely to be declared in the first week of January 2027, based on which 22 IIMs and business schools will admit students in MBA and other management courses.

Explaining the rationale behind introducing the technology, Rai said facial recognition had increasingly become a standard feature in institutional attendance systems and had also been used in online examinations during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“With the advent of technology, we moved to biometrics, and now attendance is taken through facial recognition. This is a standard technology which most of the good institutions around the world would have adopted,” he said.

The institute will analyse the technology’s performance after the examination by comparing the machine’s identification results with those of human officials. The exercise will help determine whether the system requires further modifications before it can be deployed on a wider scale.

“That’s the whole point, that we do analysis and see whether there is a discrepancy between what was done by human beings and what was done by the machine,” Rai said.

Asked about concerns surrounding the privacy of candidates’ facial data, Rai said the technology would not involve collecting any new information.

“There is no new data that is being captured. In our database, we already have candidates’ data and pictures that they have given in the application form. We are just matching it,” he said.

Rai said the institute could consider wider adoption of the technology if the experiment proves successful. However, he added that decisions on adopting new technologies would ultimately rest with individual institutions.

“Any technology, once it is tried and tested, will be picked up by everyone. I mean, that is my expectation,” he said.

CAT registrations dip marginally

CAT 2026 has received 2,89,961 registrations, marginally lower than approximately 2,95,000 last year.

AI integrated into IIM Indore curriculum

Rai also said IIM Indore had integrated AI into its academic programmes, with standalone courses on the technology and its applications across management disciplines.

“For example, if I am teaching marketing, I would also teach how to use AI while making a marketing plan, and how to use AI to do a preliminary financial balance sheet check,” he said.

The institute is also developing frameworks for the ethical use of generative AI, including guidelines on its use in research papers.