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.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    What is preventing someone from just walking into a random store with no Amazon account and walking out with stuff?

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        Not much. Employees don’t give a fuck and if they did, they would probably get fired for trying to stop a thief.

        Actually, many places where I live are scaling back self-checkout. I suspect it’s because the geniuses who tried to save a buck by getting rid of tellers didn’t realize they would lose more from theft. (It’s amazing how many people don’t give two fucks about shareholder profits, actually.)

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          Yeah that was my point. :P

          A thief is a thief, someone willing to steal from a store covered from top to bottom in cameras and sensors is going to be willing to steal from just about anywhere.

          • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            But there are people at Walmart working. No one is in the Amazon Fresh store?

            • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              9 months ago

              No one at Walmart is stopping you if you try to just walk out with product. No one is getting paid enough to risk getting sued, and there’s a non-zero chance they get fired if they do more than passively trying to stop you.

              In reality, they are going to note down your info, pull up the camera feeds, and call the cops. The exact same steps a Fresh store would take.

        • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          (It’s amazing how many people don’t give two fucks about shareholder profits, actually.)

          Heathens and sinners!

      • jkrtn
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        9 months ago

        I don’t know about Walmart but I heard Target will facial recognize you and deliberately wait across multiple trips until you have stolen enough to make it grand theft before taking action.

        • isles@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Is that tracking distributed across stores or do I have license to steal $9999 from each one?

          • RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Probably the amount stolen within the same state. But once you’re committing crimes across state lines, you’ve got bigger problems on your hands.

            And yes, they definitely share data across their whole company.

        • Neondragon25@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          I did Target security for a few months. Yes they build cases against people until it’s criminal action. It’s also not subject to one store. Rather I could just type in descriptions of people (apparent age, height, skin tone, etc) and it would search those descriptions. I could then match the person and add it to the running total. When I left I heard that some markets were rolling out an AI to track people. I can answer any questions if there’s anyone who want to know more.

          • jkrtn
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            9 months ago

            Do you know how long do they keep video for, or is it just eternity?

            • Neondragon25@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              That was can vary, I’d it’s a PTZ (pan, tilt, zoom) camera only like 3-5 days. Otherwise up to 30 days. If we were actually saving video, it was to make a police report, and we would burn it to a CD for a cop to collect. Otherwise we just used the videos to get pictures and save those to the persons profile, presumably for forever. Also as a side note the PTZ camera can get your license plate, clearly, from anywhere it can line of sight see in the parking lots.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I don’t know where you live, but I’ve been in many Walmarts in the U.S. and they have private security who are never posted at the exit that I’ve ever seen. Mostly they just sit in an office and watch security cameras.

          • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I’ve definitely seen actual cops standing at the front of the store. They’re also there every day and park their cars up front in the fire lane.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Maybe you’ve seen it, but it’s not common in my experience.

              I just traveled across four states and, because of the bad weather, we stopped at Walmarts along the way so my elderly mother could walk around and stretch her legs.

              Not one cop.

              • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                I think it’s something they do or have done around the holidays when it’s very busy. They might be hiring off duty cops and having them wear their uniform.

              • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
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                9 months ago

                Where I live they have cops in cop cars and special ‘law enforcement partner’ parking closer than the nearest handicapped space. Its great.

                Posadism looks better every day.

            • Verat@sh.itjust.works
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              9 months ago

              That’s the thing that gets me where I live, the cops have reserved parking spots but they still choose the fire lane, I guess crossing the traffic lane to the building is a line they wont cross.

    • glitch1985@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The one I went to had a turnstile after you walk though the front door so you needed to scan the code from the app.

      • Panda (he/him)@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        9 months ago

        There was a video going around on Twitter when they first implemented this where people were just hopping the turnstile a la NYC Subway