The supermarket giant says a trial from October last year to January was aimed at identifying and managing people with a history of serious and harmful in-store behaviour. There were 531 confirmed matches with people of interest, with no one mis-identified and no false positives recorded. The three Christchurch stores in the trial – New World St Martins, Pak’nSave Papanui and Pak’nSave Moorhouse – will continue using the technology, with New World Stanmore joining them. Interest has come from other stores although no further rollouts
have been confirmed. Foodstuffs said staff reported that repeat offenders were less likely to return to the trial stores and incidents involving threatening or harmful behaviour had dropped. The results gave confidence the technology could be deployed carefully and responsibly, head of retail for Foodstuffs South Island Kent Mahon said. “The focus has always been on reducing harm. The trial showed we can do that while keeping accuracy high and respecting customer privacy,” he said. Each store would have privacy, legal and risk assessments before
implementation, and prominent signage would alert customers that the technology was in use. Foodstuffs said it would continue to monitor the system’s performance and would update the list of stores on its website using facial recognition.
Foodstuffs, facial recognition, Christchurch supermarkets, New World St Martins, Pak’nSave Papanui, Pak’nSave Moorhouse, New World Stanmore, customer privacy, risk assessments, signage