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Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores (gizmodo.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Stopthatgirl7 to c/technology

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

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[–] [email protected] 182 points 5 months ago (5 children)

According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales.

Lmao.

[–] eager_eagle 83 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

idk...

According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews.

if Amazon wasn't the source of this number, where is it coming from?

[–] schmidtster 20 points 5 months ago

Amazon was using people to train the model, so at the starts it would be 100%, but eventually the goal would be to get near zero, maybe the average was 70% but when the ended it was near 40%?

[–] errer 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If the numbers don’t match your narrative, just make them up! That’s the Gizmodo way.

[–] pdxfed 31 points 5 months ago

Or Amazon, if you don't like your employees having labor rights, just sue to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional with such awesome groups as Elon Musk's SpaceX.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Probably the '1000 people in india' reviewing that footage.

The rest of the articles linked in the above one are pay walled and I don't care enough to dig further.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Goes to show the true state of the art for AI right now

[–] Harbinger01173430 8 points 5 months ago

Meanwhile, my college machine learning model made to recognize three types of flower by sepal length: 92% success rate.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm not an expert but uh, I don't think this had anything to do with AI. It was just a scanner in a basket.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Scanners in baskets/carts is what they are replacing this with.

The 'Just Walk Out' system was as the name implies; grab product and leave. No scanners, no checkout, no cashiers; just cameras watching you shop, and a heavy implication that that video is primarily watched by AI to determine your purchases. AFAIK the only scanners were to read a qr code on entry to associate you with your amazon account; the rest is hands off. Or at least that's what it's supposed to be. Seems there's a lot more labour under the hood than the advertising said. Shocker.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like it was primarily watched by people in India.

[–] Ottomateeverything 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Yes, because when you run systems like that, you use the AI, and you have the people as a fallback for when the AI fails.

It was primarily watched by people in India because the AI was failing the vast majority of the time.

So yeah, the state of the art AI is... Failing at its job 70% of the time. Instead of the hoped goal of 5%.

[–] Harbinger01173430 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can't they just...add sensors to the items and add them to your Amazon account cart anytime you add pick one, dunno, using some proximity stuff from the phone itself, then charge for the items once the phone leaves the store?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Sure they can, it just isn't as simple as "just" ;) How do you, for example, determine who picked which item if two people are standing next to each other? Or if something is put back?

Sure, a proof of concept will always work. Building it for the real world is a completely and utterly different beast.

[–] Squizzy 0 points 5 months ago

It did have AI, the cameras adjusted based on location, proximity, lighting, etc. They tracked you through the store and gavenyou a unique ID were trained to manage you being blocked from view by other shoppers.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

This feels so creepy to, being watched spending your money by slaves on the other side of the globe, and Amazon pretending it to be automated !

[–] isles 9 points 5 months ago

Amazon pretending it to be automated !

Is it surprising for a company running a service called Mechanical Turk?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Slaves?

[–] graymess 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Incredible. Their "AI" is just a bunch of people watching cameras in India.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

AI stands for Actually India

[–] Brkdncr 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I sat in front of one of these ideas at an airport. People are just dumb. They couldn’t figure out how to get into the store. They didn’t understand how to pay by just leaving.