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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

surveillance

Are You Ready for the Surveillance Supermarket?

Next time you visit the grocery store you may want to smile. That’s because cameras may not just be watching you to deter theft, they may be checking to see how happy you are (and how old you are, and what your gender and ethnicity are, etc). Welcome to the new surveillance supermarket, where you provide private companies with reams of actionable data while you shop.

An Associated Press report yesterday outlines a new wave of companies looking to install cameras in coolers and shelves in supermarkets. These cameras work to guess attributes like your age, gender and emotional state to show you hyper-targeted ads in real-time. The AP story mentions startups like Mood Media and Cooler Screens as companies creating this all-seeing technology, and says retailers like Kroger and Walgreens are experimenting with them in different locations across the country.

We just covered a startup called AWM Smart Shelf this week, which recently raised $10 million and uses a combination of cameras, AI and digital displays to serve up real-time ads and product recommendations, and even guide you through the store to find what the product you want. On its website, AWM touts its ability to identify ethnicity, age and emotional state.

The idea behind these companies is that these deep visuals can give retailers deep insight into their customers. Knowing what, when and where people purchase items tied to demographic information can arm stores with data used to serve up specials that entice them to buy more.

But it’s not just about building a better advertising mousetrap. There are a host of startups looking to retrofit supermarkets with hundreds of ceiling-mounted cameras to facilitate cashierless checkout (à la Amazon Go). These cameras keep track in real time of where you go in the store, what you pick up (and put back) and create a frictionless shopping experience.

Just yesterday, Walmart unveiled its Intelligent Retail Lab store, which uses banks of cameras and AI to monitor shelf inventory. Walmart said the cameras don’t currently track shopper movements or employ facial recognition, but it’s hard to believe a giant retailer like Walmart would stop at just making sure shelves were properly stocked. It, like Amazon is on a constant quest for efficiency, and understanding the behavior of its customers goes a long way towards streamlining operations.

All of these installations bring up serious questions about what kind of data is stored, how it’s being used, who has access to it, how long it’s stored and how it’s protected. It’s nice if some algorithm suggests milk to me on an in-store screen when I buy my Weetabix, but will that same algorithm unknowingly try to put booze in front of a depressed alcoholic in recovery? Or will it discriminate and serve up different prices based on skin color? What if your store’s data is connected to your insurance and the two prevent you from buying ice cream? These are questions retailers are going to have to answer (and we’ll be asking them!)

While privacy alarm bells should be ringing, part of me wonders how much people will care given the constant state of surveillance we’re already under. Will this just be one more tradeoff we make for convenience?

I myself am partly to blame. I love shopping at Amazon Go because it’s so easy. I’m a little less enthused about real-time ads, but that’s mostly because I think a store filled with constantly flashing digital signage would give me a headache. But in the meantime, I’m happy to tell Safeway what I’m buying when I punch in my loyalty card number to save a couple bucks.

Cameras in your grocery store are coming, are you smiling about it?

Is Big Brother Coming to Restaurant Kitchens?

As if food service didn’t have enough to worry about, what with robots predicted to automate many of jobs and put employment of actual humans in jeopardy. Now, even those humans who still have kitchen jobs in the future may have to contend with Big Brother peeking over their shoulder as they work.

ECNS.com has a report up about an artificial intelligence system being installed in restaurant kitchens in the Shaoxing Province of China to monitor for unsanitary conditions. From that story:

The system will first “learn” from a large volume of videos about nonstandard work patterns such as staff not wearing a uniform and cap, dustbins without lids, and mixed use of cutting boards, Zheng Hongdi, a representative of Yuquan Technology Development Company which developed the system, told the Global Times on Monday.

Installed cameras will monitor the kitchen, and if they catch unsanitary behaviors, as analyzed by the AI, an alert is sent to the manager. The system will also be hooked into equipment like fridges to detect any anomalies that might cause problems. Though ECNS didn’t report specifics, presumably error detection would be around temperature controls, etc..

The program is starting out in 15 restaurants and catering companies that are 3,000 square meters (~3,200 sq. feet) or larger. Should all go well, that number will eventually hit 10,000 cameras in 1,000 kitchens.

It could be tempting to dismiss this news, as it is happening in China, which exerts much stricter government controls over its society.

But reading that story this morning made me immediately think of PathSpot, the wall mounted device that looks for poop on restaurant employees hands. PathSpot wants to gamify getting employees to properly wash up, which is much less intrusive than a bank of surveillance cameras watching you leave the bathroom, but you can also see it as the tip of a spear for automating even more of a restaurant’s sanitation practices here in the U.S.

It’s not hard to understand why restaurants would want to automate such a thing. As I wrote last year when covering PathSpot:

According to the Center for Disease Control, 48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases each year in the United States. To put it in cold, monetary terms, a single foodborne illness outbreak can cost a fast casual restaurant anywhere between $6,330 to $2.1 million.

Being able to mitigate that risk — and save money — though technologies like AI or PathSpot’s fluorescent spectroscopy is an attractive proposition for restaurants. But that does mean a surveillance state for those working in the back of the house. Restaurants already have security cameras, but soon they’ll be plugged into the software that analyzes worker behavior and narcs on them when something goes wrong.

You can also see AI creep into the front of the house with technology like Presto‘s. It’s a wearable device servers don to help with customer service, but it uses AI and predictive modeling to help with inventory and labor costs. What else could it monitor?

As a consumer (and someone who worked in a restaurant and saw more than a few unsavory things), I like the idea of a cleaner kitchen and more sanitary cooking practices anywhere I eat. But for a worker, I can imagine how nerve wracking it could feel knowing that your every move is being watched and any deviation is being reported.