Amazon has insisted that its “Just Walk Out” platform isn’t powered by human workers. The company hasn’t claimed that its contactless payment and cashier-less technology was entirely devoid of human technicians or manual review.
Amazon “Just Walk Out” didn’t have backend remote workers?
Amazon has been gradually deploying stores that didn’t have attendants and cashiers. The company had installed multiple cameras and sensors that could read customers’ shopping carts and charge them automatically. Artificial Intelligence or AI was supposed to be powering the Just Walk Out technology.
However, earlier this month, several reports suggested Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology wasn’t truly AI-powered. They suggested Amazon had been employing around 1000 workers in India to do the heavy lifting.
This backend staff essentially watched people shop inside Amazon’s Just Walk Out stores, these reports claimed. These remote workers allegedly reviewed the purchases manually. Some of the reports added Amazon’s workers had 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 the workers were annotating videos to help improve them and that they validated a “small minority” of shopping…
— Shashank (@randomdalit) April 17, 2024
This may suggest Amazon wasn’t truly relying on AI. However, the e-commerce giant insists these reports are “erroneous”. The company isn’t denying the presence and use of actual humans in the technology.
Amazon has claimed that human workers helped with annotating AI-generated and real shopping data. The manual labor helped improve the Just Walk Out system, not run it entirely.
Dilip Kumar, the vice president of AWS Applications has stated that human labor helped improve and train the AI that powered the Just Walk Out technology.
Amazon Dash Cart is the future?
Amazon Dash Cart is the company’s smart shopping cart, which has cameras, sensors, and scanners. This bundle of technology allows shoppers to quickly ring up their purchases and save time.
Amazon insists the Just Walk Out tech is merely an advanced version of the Amazon Dash Cart. “It uses the same advanced, computer vision technology as Just Walk Out,” claimed Dilip.
“Just Walk Out technology detects when a shopper’s hand interacts with a product on the shelf. When that happens, Machine Learning (ML) algorithms make sure the correct item is added to the shopper’s virtual cart—all without any specific knowledge about the person.”
While dropping its “Just Walk Out” cashierless tech from its own stores, Amazon says it is expanding the list of other retailers that use it https://t.co/UZ8r2N3Zoj
— Bloomberg Asia (@BloombergAsia) April 17, 2024
The human element, which Amazon has admitted is part of the Just Walk Out technology, helps with labeling and annotation steps. These remote workers, “don’t watch live video of shoppers to generate receipts,” Amazon has stated.
It seems, as with most of the AI and ML algorithms, Amazon too uses human reviewers. It is a fact that the majority of AI projects have a human element. In fact, in several cases, humans are mandatory to ensure the AI is doing its job correctly.
🛍️Exciting news for shoppers! Amazon’s not giving up on its Just Walk Out technology, planning to sell it to over 120 third-party businesses by the end of the year! 💳
👉Just Walk Out uses cameras, AI, and sensor trackers to let customers grab what they want and leave if they… pic.twitter.com/eY3uUzpAia
— Unusual Markets (@UnusualMarkets) April 17, 2024
Amazon claims customers prefer Amazon Dash Cart, and it will start embedding the technology in third-party retailers and all Amazon Fresh stores. The company had recently indicated it would ditch the technology, at least in the US. However, it had stated that “data concerns” were holding the technology back.