Amazon's 'Just Walk Out' pullback shows AI has a long way to go

• Amazon is replacing its breakthrough "Just Walk Out" cashierless tech in its bigger Fresh stores.
• The technology was a cornerstone of Amazon's grocery strategy but is set to be phased out.
• The e-commerce giant's use of reviewers and video annotators was derided as "fake AI."

Three years ago, Amazon opened its first "Fresh" grocery store in the UK.

London shoppers were able to pick up everything from meat and dairy to fruit and vegetables and walk straight back out without queueing, as if by magic.

That magic, known as its "Just Walk Out" technology, was powered by AI and seemingly a team based in India that were annotating videos from the store as well as reviewing transactions.

Now, Just Walk Out — once a cornerstone of Amazon's grocery strategy — is set to be replaced by the e-commerce giant in its bigger stores, The Information reported on Tuesday.

Tony Hoggett, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide grocery stores, told the publication that future grocery stores would instead focus on a feature called "Dash Carts" that allows customers to scan items themselves.

The AI of "Just Walk Out" was supposed to be a key differentiator in its quest to build a futuristic brand of supermarkets that allowed customers to skip the queues.

In September, for instance, Amazon published a blog in praise of the "generative AI" at the heart of the checkout-free tech that made its way into not just Amazon Fresh stores, first launched in 2020, but the Seahawks NFL stadium too.

"The feat is a combination of computer vision, object recognition, advanced sensors, deep machine learning models, and generative AI — a type of artificial intelligence that has recently captured the public's imagination," the company said in its blog.

However, a closer look at the "Just Walk Out" technology in almost 50 of Amazon's 64 Fresh stores across the US and the UK paints a picture of AI with a key caveat.

Principally, Amazon's tech made the checkout-free magic happen in part thanks to a network of cameras that were overseen by over 1,000 people in India who spend part of their working hours verifying what people take off the shelves, a report last year said.

Their tasks, which included "manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos" to train the AI, according to The Information, is a reminder to the tech industry that AI, a technology meant to be self-sufficient and autonomous, is often still dependent on a labor-intensive and costly process.

Indeed, Amazon has denied that its Just Walk Out tech "relies on human reviewers," but rather the main duties of its team in India was to "annotate video images" to help improve the machine learning model that underpinned its cashier-less tech.

"Associates may also validate a small minority of shopping visits where our computer vision technology cannot determine with complete confidence an individual's purchases," Amazon said in a statement.

"Just Walk Out technology has continued to scale while reducing the number of human reviews year-over-year."

The e-commerce giant also added that the technology will continue to be offered in its smaller Amazon Go stores in the UK as well as other third-party retailers across the US, the UK, Australia, and Canada.

The need for humans

The continued need for engineers and monitoring staff behind Just Walk Out provides a helpful reminder that human input is still required in an age when AI hysteria has driven billions of dollars into into startups and ideas that are positioning AI as a technology with the potential to completely upend industries, replace humans, and transform the economy.

Garry Tan, president of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, reacted to the news on X with a post in which he described the autonomous checkout idea being "ruined by a professional managerial class that decided to use fake AI."

Gary Marcus, AI expert and professor emeritus at New York University, compared the way Amazon "couldn't make its grocery stores work without humans behind the scenes" to the way AI tools like ChatGPT also depend on humans labeling content as harmful, for instance.

Though Amazon's Hoggett suggested that "Just Walk Out" could have a place in smaller shops where customers might just buy an item or two, it's clear that it hasn't been the kind of game changer AI is made out to be. In its fourth quarter, Amazon's revenue from physical stores was up just 14% versus the first quarter after its big foray into the space.

Those hoping to make huge returns in the generative AI boom might want to be completely sure that the technology they're betting on will deliver the transformative changes it promises.