Amazon Go opened its first ever grocery store, without checkers, in Seatttle today.
"Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning," says the company.
Here's a video of how Amazon Go works:
Do you think cookies tracking you on the web are bad?
That's nothing compared to how you are tracked while going to buy cookies at the new Amazon Go! Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech had this to say after visiting the store:
"... cameras watch your every move from the moment you walk in and scan your smartphone. The number of cameras installed in the ceiling easily outnumbered the Fire Marshal allowance of 90 people, and they all looked mostly identical. Each was roughly the size of a 2.5-inch drive on a computer, and they all had a tiny LED light indicating that they were on. Camera clusters were typically flanked by network switch boxes, and each refrigerated shelf had its own flat, wired box wedged into its back half. These little boxes look similar to, but not identical to, the ones covering the ceiling."
Shoppers will decide if this in an invasion of privacy or a fantastic invention that will (eventually) mean the end of the grocery line.
And sadly, it could also mean the end of all those great tabloids at the checkout counter. We've learned so much from them over the years.