this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
58 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
79355 readers
4201 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wonder if 'just walk out' not scaling up had anything to do with it:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/amazon-ends-ai-powered-store-checkout-which-needed-1000-video-reviewers/
Did they ever get it to be actual AI?
Last time I heard about it they were just paying very low wages to people in India to watch everyone on webcams or something stupid
It was more accurately described as computer vision at the time, but your memory is right. They wanted to get to 5% of sales being human reviewed, but it was more like 70%.
What's funny about Amazon's efforts for Just Walk Out is that checkout free shopping already existed. Simply by letting customers carry a handheld scanner and payment terminal around the store with them.
I miss those hand scanners. I used to shoplift ~$50 worth of veg every trip. I wish I could get away with just burning Kroger to the ground, but that was all I could manage at the time.
7-11 theoretically already has it for their app; you scan with your phone and pay with Apple or Google Pay. The only thing is that you're supposed to sort of wave the completed transaction at the cashier as you go, but the only reason you'd really need to use portable self-checkout is if the cashier is busy, and when they're busy they don't want you breaking in line or to stop what they're doing to see that you're showing them a plausibly legitimate checkout screen.
In a completely, utterly, definitely unrelated story, I got accused of shoplifting by a 7-11 cashier the other day.
7-11 doesn't actually have this program, OC just shoplifts there all the time
Both things could be true.
It seems like it would work better to build the scanning tech into baskets/carts.
That could work also, but not all shops have carts, and people don't always need a basket. It's common enough to scan things and pop them directly into a bag you brought, skipping the need for a basket altogether.
AI stands for "actually, Indians"