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Does Amazon’s contactless technology, which allows customers to grab what they need on the shelves and “walk out” without going to the cash register, really rely on humans in India reviewing purchases?
The Seattle-based retailer said on Tuesday it would replace Just Walk Out technology with smart shopping carts in more than half of its 40 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, without disclosing specifics.
Just Walk Out technology sends shoppers a receipt after they leave the store, and the Amazon Dash cart instantly shows customers the amount charged for each item on screen while also allowing shoppers to bypass the checkout. Amazon said the changes to its Amazon Fresh grocery stores are in response to customer feedback, but it will continue to use Just Walk Out technology in more than 130 third-party partners, including airports, college stores and cafes.
At these locations, sensors, cameras and other tools help track what shoppers buy, the company claims. But multiple media reports say there may be more to the story than that, with hundreds of workers in India playing a key role.
How does Just Walk Out know what I want to buy?
AWS, a separate unit of Amazon, said on its website that customers using Just Walk Out technology can walk into a store and make a purchase using Amazon One (where customers can register their hands to connect their payment methods), credit/debit card or app. items and leave. Customers are automatically charged for their purchases.
“Sensors, cameras and deep learning tools can sense what consumers are taking off the shelves,” the website says.
An Amazon spokesperson further explained: “Just Walk Out technology is powered by artificial intelligence, such as computer vision and deep learning technologies, including generative artificial intelligence, to accurately determine who has taken what in any retail environment. Amazon built synthetic datasets to mimic millions of real shopping scenarios — including variations in store formats, lighting conditions, and even shopping crowds — to ensure accuracy in any environment.”
But multiple media outlets said Indian workers may also be involved.
CNBC said that like many artificial intelligence systems, Amazon’s system also relies on human reviewers and data labelers, who review Just Walk Out transactions and label footage to help train artificial intelligence models to make them effective. The Information reported last year that the team consists of more than 1,000 employees, mainly based in India, according to CNBC. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed at the time that the company uses human reviewers, but declined to say how many people the company employs in those positions, The Information reported.
Business Insider on Tuesday cited additional reporting from The Information, which reported that Just Walk Out still relies heavily on humans, according to an anonymous person involved in research on the technology.
According to Business Insider, The Information said that by 2022, about 700 out of every 1,000 Just Walk Out sales will have to be reviewed by the Amazon India team. Internally, Amazon hopes to have only 50 out of every 1,000 sales undergo manual review, the report said.
What is Amazon saying?
An Amazon spokesperson disputed the media reports in a statement on Thursday.
““The misconception that Just Walk Out technology relies on human commentators watching live streams of shoppers from India is misleading and inaccurate,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an emailed statement to USA TODAY. “Like many artificial intelligence systems, the underlying machine learning model is constantly changing.” Improvements are made by generating synthetic data and annotating actual video data.
Smart technology: Why Amazon is ditching its “Just Walk Out” checkout lines at grocery stores
“Our employees verify a small portion of shopping visits by reviewing recorded video clips to ensure our systems are operating at a high level of accuracy as we continually improve our algorithms and use human input to correct them.”
Betty Lin-Fisher is a consumer reporter for USA TODAY.Contact her at blinfisher@USATODAY.com or follow her on X, Facebook or Instagram @blinfisher. Sign up here for our free Daily Finance newsletter, which includes Friday’s consumer news.
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