Amazon Reportedly Hires Humans to Monitor Just Walk Out Purchases

At the start of April, Amazon announced a shift in its Fresh grocery stores across the United States, transitioning away from its 'Just Walk Out' technology in favor of Dash Cart. However, a report by The Information indicates that the retail giant employed humans in India to monitor customers' products and purchases.

Initially, Amazon cited customer feedback as the driver behind the transition from 'Just Walk Out.' Many customers expressed a desire to view receipts and savings during their shopping trips. The introduction of smart carts, equipped with RFID scanners and touchscreens, aims to address these preferences while still offering the convenience of skipping checkout lines, as reported by MBN.

The initial allure of 'Just Walk Out' stores promised customers a seamless experience without the need to queue for a cashier or scan items. However, reports indicate that over 1,000 IT technicians in India were involved in verifying video footage and confirming the accuracy of checkouts.

According to The Guardian, these remote workers were underpaid. By outsourcing the task of monitoring customers through store cameras and noting their selected products for charging to their Amazon accounts, workers may have been paid as little as one or two pounds per hour. This practice allowed Amazon to save millions in labor expenses.

In response, an Amazon spokesperson refuted that assertion in a statement to Business Insider, stating that the team in India primarily assists in training the model utilized by the company for Just Walk Out.

This is not the first time tech companies have claimed AI is performing tasks that humans are doing behind the scenes. In 2016, Amy Ingram, the AI personal assistant from startup X.ai, was praised for her human-like interactions, but it was revealed that humans were behind the tasks, Bloomberg reported.

Similarly, Expensify, a company scanning receipts for expense tracking, was found to have outsourced transcription tasks to humans via Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing marketplace.