AMAZON’S industry first ‘Frictionless Checkouts’ have turned out to be more eye-spy than high-tech AI, reports claim.
When Amazon bought the first ‘Just Walk Out’ store to the UK in 2021, the shopping giant trumpeted the technology that stopped the need for scanning and checkouts and would simply email you a receipt after you had left the store.
The all-seeing system reportedly used a series of cameras and artificial technology to price your products, charge your account and send you the bill while you could stroll out feeling like a common thief.
The reality might not be as hi-tech after it was claimed by The Information that the vast majority of checkouts across the world were watched on camera and reviewed by Amazon’s all-seeing 1,000-strong team team in India.
Amazon were hoping that 50 in 1,000 shopping baskets would have to be reviewed by humans. But the reality of this future tech was that around 700 in 1,000 were being reviewed by the good folk in India, it is claimed.
The report, which has come from an unnamed insider who worked on the ‘Just Walk Out’ technology according to The Information, has been disputed. Amazon claim “the characterisation of the role and number of human reviewers is not accurate” and instead that the team in India mostly worked on training the model.
“Associates may also validate a small minority of shopping visits where our computer vision technology cannot determine with complete confidence an individual’s purchases,” an Amazon spokesperson said to Business Insider.
The company, which bought the Whole Food chain in 2017, added that the technology will still be used in smaller Amazon Go stores in the UK as well as third-party retailers across the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada.
It is also shifting towards smart ‘Dash Carts’ shopping trolleys which will register each item that are placed inside and avoid the need for queues.
The tech comes as pub bar staff face being replaced by pint-pulling machines.