this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2024
544 points (95.6% liked)
WTF
787 readers
1 users here now
The average c/WTF enjoyer
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
amazon spent a lot of money on trying to do this and then found out the technology doesn't exist and outsourced it to india
Some companies do outsource their "AI" to India, but automated checkout tech is actually good enough to be used in production now. A plain white background with separated fruits like this is exactly the environment where it works best.
not really.
amazon's just walk out is the leader in this area, and it came out recently that the bulk of transactions, 7 in 10, are offloaded for manual review in india
amazon of course denied the claim, but so in vague corporate speak, and failed to provide figures to counter the 7-in-10. they also did confirm that they're scaling back just walk out. i don't think those things would be the case if this technology worked as they were hoping.
The Amazon shop is a lot more complicated than a few berries on a white shelf.
not in the ways that matter, and small, organic items like individual berries are far harder to account for than standardized product packaging
That's not necessarily true-- in fact, two similarly packaged items that are otherwise different might actually be harder to tell apart when packaged.
which is why just walk out also had rfid tokens on all their products
you can't do that with a strawberry unless you like your fruit crunchy
They had RFID? Yeah that seems like a superior option in most cases (some produce being an obvious exception)
Could be or could be the berries are put in the same arrangement each day and it's just tracking which black blob disappears.
pretty sure items on a shop shelf are in the same arrangement each day