While Amazon‘s Just Walk Out technology at its Fresh grocery stores was touted as being powered by artificial intelligence, a new report says it actually relied heavily on manual monitoring by some 1,000 people in India.
Amazon announced this week that it will be bailing on the Just Walk Out checkout technology — which used cameras and sensors to scan each item — and shift to the “Dash Cart,” a self-checkout shopping alternative.
The Information website first reported that “Amazon‘s artificial intelligence technology just meant outsourcing hundreds of jobs overseas to workers who can watch you shop in real time,” according to the Daily Mail.
“Amazon spokesperson Sarmishta Ramesh vehemently denied the allegations in an email to Dailymail.com, saying human staff in India annotate video images, which includes training AI-powered algorithms to recognize objects on the screen,” the Mail reported. The annotation, she said, “is necessary for continuously improving the underlying machine learning model powering Just Walk Out technology.”
As Amazon withdraws Just Walk Out from its U.S.-based Amazon Fresh locations, its replacement—the Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart—will harness an integrated scanner and screen to enhance the shopping experience.
With the transition, Amazon aims to provide customers with features such as product location assistance, real-time receipts, and savings tracking.
Ms. Ramesh said Amazon is opting to go with the new Dash Carts to give customers “the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store.”
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