- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- technology@lemmy.world
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.
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It’s a shame this isn’t working out, I was really hoping it would turn out to be a better way of doing self-checkouts.
The little convenience store on my way to work is nice, but I guess it falls apart in a larger store situation.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday.
The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store.
Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts.
However, the spokesperson acknowledged these associates validate “a small minority” of shopping visits when AI can’t determine a purchase.
Amazon Fresh, the e-commerce giant’s grocery store first launched in 2007, has just over 40 locations around the United States.
Amazon’s push away from expensive tests like Just Walk Out may be a sign the company is looking to further expand its presence as a supermarket.
The original article contains 512 words, the summary contains 126 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Joke’s on them, I was already Just Walking Out without going to the checkout 😎
Could we please stop crossposting to 7 different communities?
You can see from the screenshot you posted that it was only posted one other time in this community. And that was by me, posting many hours after this one. So you blaming @Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world is very unfair.
As for why I posted it, simple: federation problems. I looked and didn’t see it already posted, because for whatever reason, on my instance when viewing this community, it didn’t appear. Only when someone else posted it and linked to this post on their instance did I ever become aware of it. If you look at this post on my instance you’ll note only two comments show up, and that’s because they’re the comments I forced to show up by manually searching for them using a different instance’s URL. (Not sure why, but even when trying to search for it, I can’t get your post with the actual screenshot to show up on my instance, hence my reply to this comment instead.)
I’m not blaming any specific person, I’m blaming whoever thought it was a good idea to cross-post this 7 times.
As for why I posted it, simple: federation problems.
Ok sure, that explains it. I should have thought about that.
?? I didn’t post this anywhere else? Or even see it anywhere else?
I’m not saying you did this, but someone did.
I scroll through to see if things have been posted before. If I don’t see it, I assume it hasn’t. And I use a client so I don’t see if there are cross posts because it doesn’t display them.
What is preventing someone from just walking into a random store with no Amazon account and walking out with stuff?
What is preventing someone from doing that at Walmart?…
I don’t know about Walmart but I heard Target will facial recognize you and deliberately wait across multiple trips until you have stolen enough to make it grand theft before taking action.
I did Target security for a few months. Yes they build cases against people until it’s criminal action. It’s also not subject to one store. Rather I could just type in descriptions of people (apparent age, height, skin tone, etc) and it would search those descriptions. I could then match the person and add it to the running total. When I left I heard that some markets were rolling out an AI to track people. I can answer any questions if there’s anyone who want to know more.
Not much. Employees don’t give a fuck and if they did, they would probably get fired for trying to stop a thief.
Actually, many places where I live are scaling back self-checkout. I suspect it’s because the geniuses who tried to save a buck by getting rid of tellers didn’t realize they would lose more from theft. (It’s amazing how many people don’t give two fucks about shareholder profits, actually.)
Yeah that was my point. :P
A thief is a thief, someone willing to steal from a store covered from top to bottom in cameras and sensors is going to be willing to steal from just about anywhere.
But there are people at Walmart working. No one is in the Amazon Fresh store?
No one at Walmart is stopping you if you try to just walk out with product. No one is getting paid enough to risk getting sued, and there’s a non-zero chance they get fired if they do more than passively trying to stop you.
In reality, they are going to note down your info, pull up the camera feeds, and call the cops. The exact same steps a Fresh store would take.
(It’s amazing how many people don’t give two fucks about shareholder profits, actually.)
Heathens and sinners!
Yes, shareholders aren’t people so we shouldn’t really care about them at all
According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales.
Lmao.
Goes to show the true state of the art for AI right now
Meanwhile, my college machine learning model made to recognize three types of flower by sepal length: 92% success rate.
I’m not an expert but uh, I don’t think this had anything to do with AI. It was just a scanner in a basket.
It did have AI, the cameras adjusted based on location, proximity, lighting, etc. They tracked you through the store and gavenyou a unique ID were trained to manage you being blocked from view by other shoppers.
Scanners in baskets/carts is what they are replacing this with.
The ‘Just Walk Out’ system was as the name implies; grab product and leave. No scanners, no checkout, no cashiers; just cameras watching you shop, and a heavy implication that that video is primarily watched by AI to determine your purchases. AFAIK the only scanners were to read a qr code on entry to associate you with your amazon account; the rest is hands off. Or at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. Seems there’s a lot more labour under the hood than the advertising said. Shocker.
Sounds like it was primarily watched by people in India.
This feels so creepy to, being watched spending your money by slaves on the other side of the globe, and Amazon pretending it to be automated !
good idea, poor implementation
They couldn’t train an AI well enough to replace humans in the loop. That suggests it was a bad idea from the start. If it were possible at all with the current state of the art of AI, Amazon would be one of the companies that could do it.
It worked really smoothly for me…the one time I went cuz it was such a depressing experience. Don’t get me wrong tho. I love self checkout. Amazon store sucks.
What made it depressing for you?
It just feels sad in there. The colors are sad, the products are boring, the cameras all over are dystopian. Even though there were other people there, it felt isolating. Too sterile.
Gotcha. Never seen anything on them except this story (and maybe another at some point that mentioned they were opening some), so was curious.
