The correct term is mass surveillance. I guess authors just have to put AI into every other headline for clickbait.

Such measurable biometric characteristics include facial features, gait, voice, or patterns in the iris of your eye.

It is when you are using neural networks to do the matching. It’s one of the main point of the Europe Unions AI bill which outlaws the use of machine learning tools like these on citizens by goverments or compagnies. There’s a couple of exceptions mostly when it’s a national security issue.

It’s AI that’s doing the matching. I don’t think most people realize how broad the category ‘AI’ actually is. Just because a system doesn’t meet your false expectations of what you imagined AI to be like doesn’t mean it’s not AI.