Amazon is confident other retailers want its smart shopping technology, and it insists it doesn’t spy on shoppers.
The company will soon start selling its Dash Cart to other retailers in an effort to expand the service to customers making large purchases, it said in a statement on Wednesday.
Dash Carts, which launched in 2020, use a combination of computer vision and sensor technology to identify items that are placed or removed from carts. They are currently available at a certain Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh stores. Amazon plans to offer the smart shopping cart at all of its U.S.-based Amazon Fresh stores eventually.
According to the tech giant, Dash Carts can help customers budget, weigh and locate items in store through its on-screen tool. The service can also help grocery stores better budget their inventory by keeping track of which items customers purchase the most, it added.
Amazon’s Dash Cart ambitions come shortly after it said it would remove its “Just Walk Out” technology service from its grocery stores. The technology had been met with criticism after reports surfaced that the company leaned on roughly 1,000 employees in India to watch customers while they shopped. The cashier-less service uses the same technology as Dash Carts.
Despite pulling the service from some locations, Amazon said it plans to launch more of its Just Walk Out service at smaller-format stores in 2024.
As for whether its employees were in fact watching customers from afar, Amazon said that is “untrue.”
“Associates don’t watch live video of shoppers to generate receipts—that’s taken care of automatically by the computer vision algorithms,” the company said. “This is no different than any other AI system that places a high value on accuracy, where human reviewers are common.”