Abstract: An artificial neural network (ANN) is an information processing system established by simulating the structure and logical thinking of the human brain. It uses the interconnection between a large number of neurons to form a network system that can perform complex calculations, and is widely used. For various complex problems, by choosing different model structures and transfer functions, various neural networks can be formed and different expressions of the relationship between output and input can be obtained. Face recognition is one of the important research directions of ANN. It mainly refers to the automatic inference of identity, expression, age, gender and other attribute information through the analysis of facial images, videos or pictures and video collections of people. Widely used in mobile payment, safe city, criminal investigation and other fields. The origin, types and research progress of ANN are introduced, and the face recognition technology based on neural network are investigated.