Sainsbury’s has suspended its use of live facial recognition tool Facewatch at its East Dulwich store after a customer was wrongly challenged by the staff allegedly using the data by the technology as a suspected shoplifter and asked to leave. Meanwhile, Facewatch has confirmed to Asian Trader that its live facial recognition technology was "not at fault in this incident".
Matt Arnold, 46, was shopping at the south London branch on Aug 6 when he was approached by two members of management while waiting for a staff member to approve an alcohol purchase at a self-service checkout.
The shopper had scanned his shopping and Nectar card before asking a member of staff to authorise the alcohol purchase. Instead, he was approached by management and told he could not be served because of an incident that had allegedly taken place “earlier in the week”.
Arnold described the encounter as a “terrifying glimpse of the future”, warning that the growing use of surveillance technology in retail could leave customers humiliated when automated alerts are acted on without sufficient human judgement.
"They came over and said I had to leave. The staff member said I'd been identified by the AI, and the cameras had flagged me," he told BBC London.
"A shoplifter does not walk around with that much shopping, they don't scan it through, they don't put their Nectar card through.
"But what upset me was thinking this is what the future could be - people just listen to what the machine tells them to do without thinking about the consequences.
After being escorted off the premises, Arnold said he had looked back from the entrance and saw an overhead CCTV monitor alert with a red circle surrounding his face.
Arnold said his experience had led him to believe staff were struggling to operate the system in a busy store environment.
"Even though what happened to me was horrendous, I feel sorry for the staff," he said. "Mistakes are going to happen. They're not being equipped to implement the AI properly."
Arnold argued that even if the technology was as accurate as Sainsbury's claimed, the 0.2% error rate is "a lot of people when millions go into a Sainsbury's shop each week".
"There are more people than me who have been caught out by this," he added.Sainsbury's head office contacted Arnold the following day to apologise, maintaining the incident had been caused by "human error" rather than software failure.
Sainsbury’s has apologised to Arnold and said the incident was caused by “human error”.
Facewatch, the technology provider, said its system itself was not responsible for the mistake.
A Facewatch spokesperson said: “We can confirm that our live facial recognition technology was not at fault in this incident. A correct alert was sent to the retailer, but was subsequently subject to human error in the way it was handled in store.”
The company said its decision to suspend a retailer from its system was a precautionary measure designed to prevent further alerts while the retailer reviews its use of the technology.
“When we suspend a retailer from our system, this is a precautionary measure that prevents the store from receiving further alerts while the retailer reviews its use of the system and undertakes appropriate actions, including further staff training where necessary,” the spokesperson added.
It is not the first time a Sainsbury's facial recognition system - supplied by technology firm Facewatch - has led to an innocent shopper being challenged.
Earlier this year, a London-based shopper Warren Rajah was shopping in the Elephant & Castle branch of Sainsbury's when he was suddenly approached by three staff members and was told to leave the store immediately.
Despite being a regular shopper at the branch, he was not given a proper reason and was directed to contact Facewatch who in turn asked him to send in a picture of himself and a photograph of his passport. Rajah said he felt as if he had faced a "trial" in the supermarket aisle, with the three Sainsbury's staff members acting as his "judge, jury and executioner". He also claimed that Sainsbury's staff is "insufficiently trained" to handle Facewatch leads.