Amazon’s Cashierless Store Is Almost Ready for Prime Time

> Employees have tried to fool the technology. One day, three enterprising Amazonians donned bright yellow Pikachu costumes and cruised around grabbing sandwiches, drinks and snacks. The algorithms nailed it, according to a person familiar with the situation, correctly identifying the employees and charging their Amazon accounts, even though they were obscured behind yellow polyester.

Okay, so 3 employees tested it? This tech is going to be "tested" in the real world by tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the first few months/year. Something tells me things will go far from smoothly.

I've only had an experience with a "semi-cashierless" store, sort of speak, where the cashier would scan your stuff, and then it would give you a ticket, and you'd go to pay with it at a not-so-intuitive machine. Oh, and you also had to scan it again before you left the area at the designated exit-gate.

Let me tell you, it felt like both a more frustrating experience than just paying the cashier and it took longer time. The only thing this did is save the cashier 15 seconds per person, while the store paid for a dozen of those machines who knows what.

So we'll see if this is indeed a better experience, or it's just meant to save Amazon money on not having to pay for cashiers, while giving customers a more frustrating experience and making them spend more time in the store to register every item (for the same number of purchased items).

Apple's Face ID can't even identify your own face 100% of the time. How is Amazon's tech going to identify (from a distance) millions of people that pass through the store and every item they got with 100% accuracy??

There's a YC company also working on the same thing, here's their demo from 3 months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS8TJwBAFs

https://www.standardcognition.com/

You need to have an app on your phone and scan a code from the app/phone to enter. My guess is that it is based on location tracking of the phone (via either Bluetooth or WiFi) rather than facial recognition.

So they've spent an extra year with people who fit the demographics of an Amazon employee trying to trick their systems. That should protect them from people who fit the demographics of an Amazon employee.

There still seem to be many of the issues people brought up a year ago, such as how this depends on the presence of a phone with the appropriate app installed, or what happens with groups of people in which only one person has the app (such as with kids).

More to the point, I can see how this would be better for Amazon, but I'm not sure it's better for most shoppers. Amazon gets to charge people who graze on produce while in the store, and kids who consume snacks in the store, and can presumably produce video evidence when customers throw a fit. But they can also overcharge me for things and how am I supposed to know that? Check the app in the parking lot to make sure I have everything it charged me for? What recourse do I have if not? What if something wasn't charged as marked on the shelf? I've already paid at that point. I've gone through this enough times with stores high-end and low-end to know it's inevitable for Amazon.

The leverage is all Amazon's, and the convenience doesn't offset that for me. I know I'm not alone, but maybe there aren't enough like me to dent their ambitions.