Amazon Details Employees’ Role In AI Model Improvement
Amazon shared more details about how it's improving the AI used in its cashierless checkout technology in response to concerns that employees are monitoring transactions.
How companies marry human efforts with artificial intelligence is increasingly under the microscope as usage increases, and how they communicate these efforts is being equally scrutinized.
In a company blog post, AWS applications VP Dilip Kumar explained that Just Walk Out is powered by low-cost sensors and machine learning models that monitor items a customer has picked up, adding it to a virtual shopping cart and generating a receipt.
Employees improve the AI by labeling and annotating live and synthetic shopping data, with the receipts generated by computer vision, according to the company.
Jon “JJ” Jenkins, a senior executive on the AWS team responsible for Just Walk Out, had shared in a Forrester interview that while there can be more human intervention required to improve the algorithms for entirely new store formats, AI does almost all the work at small stores with the same planograms.
Kumar also said that Amazon planned to expand the use of its Dash Carts, smart shopping carts equipped with a scanner and screen that allow shoppers to check out while they shop.
Amazon said it sees Just Walk Out and Dash Carts as different tools that can be used to reduce lines based on the store format. The Dash Carts are expected to be better suited to big weekly trips at grocery stores, where the screens can also be used to help with navigation, deliver personalized offers, and provide a running tally of their transaction cost.
The Dash Cart is currently available at select Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh locations but will be rolling out to all Amazon Fresh stores in the U.S. as well as some third-party grocers.
Beyond powering Amazon Fresh stores, Just Walk Out is now used at more than 140 locations across the U.S., U.K., Australia, and Canada. Kumar’s post notes the technology is best for small, mission-driven trips and high traffic environments like stadiums, theme parks, and airports. It can also be used to allow stores to operate 24/7.
“The response from shoppers to Just Walk Out in small-format stores has been so strong that we will launch more small-format third-party Just Walk Out stores in 2024 than any year prior, more than doubling the number of third-party stores with the technology this year,” he wrote.
