The Amazon 'Just Walk Out' Stores That Supposedly Used AI To Know What You Took Were Actually Just Being Watched by People in India

Gizmodo — 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.

Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store. Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.

This is the perfect Big Tech story. A supposedly incredible technological breakthrough that solved a problem that didn't really exist to begin with and it turns out it was fake the whole time anyway. Brilliant.

Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I don't really remember anyone complaining about the way grocery stores have worked for a century before Amazon came along with this idea. Sure, saving the two minutes it takes to check out is fine, but was there one person on the planet who was going to suddenly become brand loyal to Amazon Fresh because of this? I used one of these stores one time and found myself 1) anxious that the total would come out incorrect and 2) not at all any more impressed with the experience than going to a normal store.

I'm fascinated by these people running the operation in India, though. I'm sure they all had to sign nondisclosure agreements, but having a job doing something that everyone thinks is being done by some really cool, new technology when it's actually just you sitting in a warehouse watching videos has to be maddening. I'd tell everybody.

Amazon does a lot of things well. They can get me any random item I might need in a matter of hours. So just stick to that instead of trying to reinvent the grocery store with a warehouse of 1,000 guys in India watching people shop and trying to decipher if they put that box of Cheez-Its back or not.