Amazon claims its Just Walk Out platform is not powered by human workers. The company does not claim that its contactless payment and cashierless technology was completely free of human technicians or manual reviews.
Didn’t Amazon “Just Walk Out” have remote backend workers?
Amazon has gradually rolled out stores without clerks or cashiers. The company had installed multiple cameras and sensors that could read customers’ shopping carts and automatically top up their shopping carts. Artificial intelligence (AI) was to power Just Walk Out technology.
However, earlier this month, there were some reports suggesting that Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology is not truly AI-powered. They suggested that Amazon employed about 1,000 workers in India to do the heavy lifting.
According to these reports, the backend staff essentially monitored people shopping inside Amazon’s Just Walk Out stores. These remote workers allegedly manually verified purchases. Some reports added that Amazon employees will need to review about 70%, or 700, of every 1,000 transactions in 2022.
Amazon says on its website that Just Walk Out uses “computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning,” but doesn’t mention contractors. The company told Gizmodo that employees annotate videos to help improve them, justifying a “very small” number of purchases.
— Shashank (@randomdalit) April 17, 2024
This may suggest that Amazon wasn’t really relying on AI. However, the e-commerce giant claims these reports are “false.” The company is not denying the presence and use of actual humans in technology.
Amazon claims that humans helped annotate the actual shopping data generated by the AI. Manual work helped improve the Just Walk Out system rather than fully implementing it.
Dilip Kumar, vice president of AWS applications, said human labor helped improve and train the AI behind the Just Walk Out technology.
Is Amazon Dash Cart the future?
Amazon Dash Cart is the company’s smart shopping cart equipped with cameras, sensors, and scanners. This bundle of technology allows shoppers to instantly recall their purchases and save time.
Amazon claims that Just Walk Out technology is just an evolution of the Amazon Dash Cart. “It uses the same advanced computer vision technology as ‘Just Walk Out,'” Dilip claimed.
“Just Walk Out technology detects when a shopper’s hand touches an item on the shelf. When that happens, machine learning (ML) algorithms ensure the correct item is added to the shopper’s virtual cart. No special knowledge of the person is required.
Amazon says it will remove ‘Just Walk Out’ cashierless technology from its stores while expanding the list of other retailers that use it https://t.co/UZ8r2N3Zoj
— Bloomberg Asia (@BloombergAsia) April 17, 2024
This human element, which Amazon confirmed is part of its Just Walk Out technology, helps with the labeling and annotation steps. These remote workers “do not watch live video of shoppers to generate receipts,” Amazon said.
Like most AI and ML algorithms, Amazon also appears to use human reviewers. It’s true that the majority of AI projects include a human element. In fact, in some cases, humans are required to ensure that the AI is doing its job correctly.
🛍️Great news for shoppers! Amazon isn’t giving up on Just Walk Out technology and plans to sell it to over 120 third-party companies by the end of the year. 💳
👉Just Walk Out uses cameras, AI, and sensor trackers to help customers pick up what they want and walk away if they want. pic.twitter.com/eY3uUzpAia
— Unusual Markets (@UnusualMarkets) April 17, 2024
Amazon claims customers love Amazon Dash Cart and plans to start incorporating the technology into third-party retailers and all Amazon Fresh stores. The company recently signaled its intention to phase out the technology, at least in the United States. However, the company said that “data concerns” were preventing widespread adoption of the technology.
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April 17, 2024
