Self-checkout lanes at grocery stores were, in the early 2000s, supposed to herald a robot revolution. Soon, everything in retail would be done by robots! Teenagers would have to find new gainful employment! Needless to say, if you’ve been to a grocery store lately, you know it didn’t really work out that way. But Amazon wants to try again, by turning the whole store into a giant self-checkout lane, called Amazon Go.
The idea, on the consumer level, is simple: Boot up the Amazon Go app, scan the barcode at the subway-esque turnstiles, walk into the store, and start dumping stuff into your bag. The store will track what you pick up, create a virtual cart for you, and charge your credit card when you walk out the door with your food. Amazon claims it does this with a mix of machine learning, computer vision (i.e. cameras tracking your every move) and other technology.
It all looks so good, doesn’t it?
There are a few questions Amazon hasn’t answered yet, however, that might keep this from being more than a novelty. For one thing, if you watch the video closely, you’ll notice it’s really more of an automat than a grocery store, with most of the food prepackaged. Amazon’s system might not be able to handle produce yet. Another question is what happens if, say, your phone dies in the middle of shopping, or has a brain fart and has to reload. And, of course, there’s the class issue: While 68% of Americans have smartphones, that still leaves nearly a third of them unable to get into Amazon’s fancy grocery store, and this assumes the Amazon Go app won’t be limited to the latest version of Android and iOS.
Oh, and considering the less-than-great track record the tech industry has with privacy, you may reasonably be asking just what Amazon would do with a complete list of what you eat, gathered over time, and collated against your other purchases. Do you really want to walk out the door having bought your first cupcake in months, and the next email you get is Amazon recommending exercise classes in your area? Right now the concept’s being tested in Seattle by Amazon employees and some civilians recruited as beta testers, so we’re sure they’ll find a few bugs. Really, though, grocery stores might be the wrong place for this technology. We can think of a lot of things at the drug store, for example, that we’d really rather buy without talking to another person.
(Via Gizmodo)