AI facial recognition scanning stopped at Sainsbury’s after shopper ejected

Sainsbury's has suspended its live AI facial recognition technology at its East Dulwich store after customer Matt Arnold was wrongly flagged as a shoplifter and forced to leave. Both Sainsbury's and technology provider Facewatch attributed the incident to human error in handling the alert, not a failure of the AI system. Arnold noted that despite Facewatch's claimed 99.98% accuracy rate, the small error margin still affects a significant number of shoppers.

AI facial recognition scanning stopped at Sainsbury’s after shopper ejected Sainsbury's /topic/sainsburys has suspended its live AI facial recognition technology at an East Dulwich /topic/east-dulwich store after a customer /topic/customer was wrongly flagged as a shoplifter.- Matt Arnold was forced to leave the store after staff acted on an automated alert, describing the experience as a terrifying glimpse of the future. - Both Sainsbury's and technology provider Facewatch insisted that the incident was caused by human error in handling the alert rather than a failure of the AI system. - Mr Arnold highlighted that despite Facewatch's claimed 99.98 per cent accuracy rate, the small error margin still affects a significant number of shoppers. - The suspension follows a similar incident in January where another customer was mistakenly asked to leave a London /topic/london branch after being confused with an offender.