2024-04-09
Amazon's AI checkout failure and Google's 'incognito mode' tracking lawsuit

Amazon announced last week that most of its supermarkets would scrap a cashier-less payment system that it claimed was powered by machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence.

Launched in 2016, the system called "Just Walk Out” was marketed as “the world’s most advanced shopping technology", allowing customers to simply pick up what they need and leave the store, while their credit card would be automatically charged.
    
However, it turned out that the system required significant human supervision, with more than 1,000 people hired in India to verify transactions.

Why couldn't AI deliver on the original vision of a truly checkout-free system? Does this example show the limits of what current technology can do? Listen to AI consultant Raj Shroff's take on the issue.

You'll also hear about a proposed legal settlement that would see Google delete billions of browsing records of people who used its incognito mode.