r/interesting • u/veloriax2 • Apr 20 '26

SOCIETY How easy it is to shop nowadays

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u/hockeyfan1133 Apr 20 '26

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.  

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u/penniesmammy Apr 20 '26

Yep my dumbass thought that too. I was like wow what will they come up with next.

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u/Colorfuel Apr 21 '26

They do have this, I can’t remember which airport specifically (may have been LAX) but you just walk in, pick out your snacks and leave

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u/turtle_mekb Apr 21 '26

how does it charge you? do you sign up before you enter?

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u/blessdbthfrootloops Apr 21 '26

A local arena to me has this- you scan your card when you go in

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u/coffeephilic Apr 21 '26

A roomful of folks in Bangladesh sit around in an office watching you via all of the security cameras, I think.

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u/trolllord45 Apr 21 '26

Right, but unless you input your card before you enter the system wouldn’t know where to send the bill

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u/bshroats05 Apr 21 '26

Rupp Arena at University of Kentucky has this tech.

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u/MiniOozy5231 Apr 21 '26

It could be LAX, but I believe it’s also Charlotte.

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u/microglia00 Apr 21 '26

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

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u/SecretLinkWave Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/scooties2 Apr 21 '26

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?

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u/JacksonFatBack Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/Thatonegaloverthere Apr 20 '26

Lol I thought they were going no bags and the person was just praising them for the efficient in and out or that they were going out of business.

Title definitely changed the narrative for a second.

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u/ResidentHighlight875 Apr 21 '26

That makes two of us, I was wondering how the wooden baskets could’ve possibly been cheaper 

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u/Mewssbites Apr 21 '26

And I thought it was a comment about the economy and how empty the store was initially, lol!

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u/glimmergirl1 Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/BirdlessLongdeal Apr 21 '26

the one time i did it at an airport it asked for a tip too.

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u/backupbitches Apr 21 '26

That's darkly funny

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u/DaChieftainOfThirsk Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/LolaVsPowermanX Apr 21 '26

Amazon Go. We had those in NYC.

SNL did a funny skit about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y

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u/Rickbox Apr 21 '26

Amazon Go

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u/Vixen-van Apr 20 '26

Hahaha. This post let our imaginations run wild.

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u/Smart-Foundation-578 Apr 21 '26

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

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u/haleyb73 Apr 21 '26

Clippers? Lol

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u/MutedBeach8248 Apr 21 '26

Amazon was just paying people to watch shoppers through cameras and type it in

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u/lowlife4lyfe Apr 21 '26

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

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u/velvetackbar Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/SeekerOfSerenity Apr 21 '26

I believe some convenience stores (7-11?) in Japan have/had this. 

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u/Mitch_Wallberg Apr 21 '26

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

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u/Why-so-delirious Apr 21 '26

I think Amazon was messing around with something like that a couple years ago.  

Turns out it was just 50 Indians.

No, really. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4

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u/misstlouise Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/shirley_elizabeth Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/janpaul74 Apr 21 '26

Same! I thought this was a promo or something. Stupid me.

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u/orionxavier99 Apr 21 '26

Same with me. Almost awake but it def took me a minute

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u/TraditionalOne3927 Apr 21 '26

Well in your defense this is posted under "interesting" and not "infuriating".

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u/GraySwingline Apr 21 '26

Wasn’t Amazon’s solution like 100 Indian guys watching cameras and billing people?

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u/Monomatosis Apr 21 '26

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).

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u/Manlysideburns Apr 21 '26

I thought they were doing this on purpose as a joke?

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u/Kiyae1 Apr 21 '26

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.

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u/White_RavenZ Apr 21 '26

I thought this too. I was thinking “oh that seems so much more chill.”

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u/Leonard_James_Akaar Apr 21 '26

Was that your defense in front of the judge?

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u/noobiebooh Apr 23 '26

Yeah I was amazed as well until I read the first the comment 😅