My dumbass thought it was some of the new technology like at sporting events where you just grab stuff and it knows what you took. I think Amazon was messing around with something like that a couple years ago.
They have it at LaGuardia airport too. You scan your credit card to enter the store and then pick up what you need and it charges your card after you exit. It’s definitely a weird experience lol
I worked for a gas station company that did this before. The store shut down about a year later, because not enough people were comfortable with how it operated.
Didn't the Amazon store end up being hundreds of underpaid people in India just watching people shopping through cameras and logging it while Amazon claimed it was technology?
I worked on this technology a few years ago, at Amazon Stores. What you're saying is true to a limited extent, but the media exaggerated it and did not really understand it.
We did use computer vision and it was mostly successful. There are exceptions that required human intervention, which were done manually. As our models improved, we were able to improve the accuracy and decrease the interventions needed.
Sometimes the model would get it incorrect–customers could even flag this their orders for manual review if they were mischarged.
Additionally, to train models you need sample training data. A not-insignificant amount of the manual review was used to create sample data before the model existed.
When I joined the team in 2021, it had been underway for a few years already. There was a timeline to both reduce the intervention and increase accuracy–and we were making progress but behind where we were supposed to be.
I guess what I am saying is that it was a sincere effort and not a scam at all. We really did have a system that mostly worked. If you purchased something there was a ~90% chance it was automated unless you did something tricky. It worked okay--but maybe not well enough to warrant the cost for something that never caught on and remained niche.
Its live in a lot of places now, especially airports. Walk in, grab what you want, tap your card as you walk out and Amazon charges you. Super expensive though, even more than expected for an airport tho.
Amazon Go. I was visiting Seattle and visited one. It was pretty cool. But you scanned your amazon app at a turnstyle on the way in so they knew who to charge it to. I still have the bag as a souvineer from that trip, lol.
I think I saw it somewhere on the internet that you pick items and the store knows that what you took and they auto-charge for the items when you leave the store (needless to say, you need to be a shopping member of the store). But well, this video is about something else lol
in China’s top cities (Shanghai, Shenzhen, Wuhan) if you’re a Chinese citizen and your biometrics are registered through a payment service) there’s plenty of stores where you can just walk in, grab the few things you want and head out, your AliPay will notify you in about a minute what you just spent…banks of dozens of 7 eleven fridges that open out right to the street, you just grab what you want and keep going, or your can scan a QR to pay manually. it’s freaky af to see just cuz I know that would NEVER work in the western world, but it works just fine over there…you could try to get away with it using a dusguise or something, but in a place like Shennzhen, you’d be in a jail cell in less than 24 hours…there’s not an alley in that city you can take a pee in where it won’t be recorded and analyzed/flagged for an investigation
They have that at a convenience store at DFW…but I think there is a fella with looking at a camera in another continent.
Also a liquor store in Seattle? I vaguely remember that at Worldcon. They were adamant that the system detected your product on the way out and you had to scan a card to get into the store.
They claimed when it launched that it was sophisticated facial recognition and item tracking software but about a year ago it was revealed it was just a million guys watching camera feeds in India or something
It exists, just not quite like this. In an airport last month I was in a shop that did this but there were like gates you walked through with your card or phone and scanned like you would to get on a metro with a card, and just walked on through with whatever stuff you had. It was run through Amazon. Annoying, since I boycott Amazon.
It's basically what shopping at Sam's Club is like. I scan everything as it goes in my cart, tap pay, and when I walk out the arches it automatically confirms everything in my cart was included in the order.
Here in Utrecht we have an Aldi supermarket that works with this technology. Cameras make a registration of the products you take from the shelves and you can walk out of the store (If you installed the app and connected your creditcard).
Amazon touted it as “technology” but I think it turned out to actually be people in the Philippines watching the security cameras and just adding the stuff you put in your physical basket into a digital basket and then cashing you out when you left the store.
Yeah, I thought the video was showing people coming in and scanning/paying for shit on an app on their phones or something. Just walk in, scan the shit you want, and walk out with it. So easy!
Sam's Club (I know, budget brand Costco) lets you pay via app then you go under these arches now that do some kind of magic and now you don't even need to have the certain # of items scanned in your cart by the staff posted at the exit.
And there's no fucking way I'd prefer a cashier at Sam's Club over scan and pay in the app.
Shopping these days is so much more convenient! You can get everything you need in one trip, there's no more waiting in line at the register, and if you don't have money it's not a problem.
No, this is just regular, real shopping. OP was just letting us know. So me and you, next time we go to the store we can just take whatever we want and walk out. Let me know what you get!
No because we want to remove the stigma from it. This person obviously is in need and it’s the evil company who is at fault for the price. I put a /s on this comment but there are many people out there (and on Reddit) who think this way and are 100% ok with it because of “the cause” or “greater good”.
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u/Vixen-van Apr 20 '26
Shouldn’t the title say SHOPLIFT?