Their fate seemed sealed when it was revealed a bit back that the “just walk out” technology was more hype than substance. Just lots of people watching what you’re doing on camera vs an actual AI that worked well at mass deployment scale. A good idea, poorly executed.
Reports said the “AI” was largely 1000+ people in India watching the cameras.
If Amazon actually managed to build AI that worked well at a decent cost point it would have been great since nobody likes those silly self checkout machines.
What’s amusing about all of this is that before it got leaked that it was basically a bunch of people in India watching cameras Amazon folks spoke about the tech like there was some super secret AI they developed. Since that story broke nobody there seems to want to talk about “just walk out” anymore.
Even that didn't work well, when I was at an airport recently I had investigated 4-5 items as I had some time to kill. When I was walking out it wanted to bill me for 70 dollars even though I only had a bottle of water and a candy bar.
I have little trust that a corporate behemoth will do right by me and refund the discrepancy at an unspecified later time as it says it will on checkout.
They pay the most for human involvement. Wages, special conditions, and insurance are exponentially higher than their plans of warehouse to end-user via lockers and drones.
¹ Individuals manning a labyrinthine system of cameras and sensor fusion, like hawks, logging the precise moment you plop a Twix into your basket! Praise Bezos!
Yeah, we had one near us, close to the metro exit, and it was genuinely great when you needed to grab something for dinner on the way home. Once you knew where things were, you could be in and out in 20 seconds. That said, it never seemed busy compared to other grocery shops in the area, so I think a lot of people were put off by it feeling "weird" to shop without checking-out.
There is no difference from the customer perspective so the store failed for reasons that have nothing to do with the "just walk out" technology or lack thereof. Why spend lots of money doing R&D only to find out that the concept doesn't sell? Wait for the product to be successful before spending the money to scale it up. Same as anything else.
I think the idea could work well but the execution in the field was consistently very poor. There were a few of these at airports with just an intimidating gate and generally non-engaging human standing there.
It was as if they expected everyone to know what to do, but when I’d watch 99% of people just sort of looked at the store, saw the odd gate things, and then just shrugged and walked off. The stores were almost always completely empty amidst a busy concourse.
Even if the tech worked (reports say it didn’t work well) they completely missed the boat on creating a clear customer experience that navigated the new tech.
Has anyone used their go stores? I'm curious how the experience felt from a consumer standpoint. Do you feel welcomed or more like a thief?
I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontinued them in a short period of time.
Every time I walk into a McDonalds I see people who will rather stand 5 minutes at the counter waiting for a human cashier than use one of the available kiosks. I'm sure some are paying cash but there are certainly people who are just not comfortable with technology.
The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I would just walk in with my own bag, and put items directly from the shelf into the bag, and walk out the door. It was extremely convenient and fast once you got over how weird it felt.
I think they could have done a lot more in giving social clues on both the way in and way out.
A lot of people have trouble using those and it's not just tech discomfort or whatever. You have to be able to hold your arms up in front of you, touching specific points in space. The UI is not good and does not provide good moment-to-moment feedback about whether you've pressed a button or which one. You have to be moderately-to-strongly literate, you have to wrap your head around the menu organization, know what you're looking for by name and be able to guess where it is in this system.
I've watched so many people struggle to use these machines for so many different reasons. Pretty much anyone with a physical or cognitive disability will be better off with the cashier. Sucks they have to wait much longer for one now.
They’re fine and work as advertised. One weird thing is you don’t get the receipt for 10-20 minutes, presumably while humans are viewing the footage.
The main thing I use it for is convenient returns, which is why I’m disappointed in this news. I hardly ever buy things there other than things like gum or chips.
our university has been rolling out just walk out markets across campus due to rampant stealing. shopping there doesn't feel like stealing, but the store design feels oppressive with racks of cameras and thick black shelves because it's designed for sensors first not humans
one minor downside (especially since I don't live on campus anymore) is that in order to walk around and peruse the shelves, I have to give them my payment info just to enter
The headline in their corporate press release says "Amazon doubles down on online grocery delivery and Whole Foods Market expansion to reach more customers"
The "1000 people in India watching cameras" reveal was the moment the magic died. Once you know the wizard is just a guy behind a curtain, you can't unsee it.
The interesting question isn't whether the tech was ready. It wasn't. The question is whether Amazon learned anything useful from the attempt.
Computer vision for retail checkout is a legitimate hard problem. Occlusion, similar-looking products, people changing their minds. I've worked on CV pipelines and the gap between "works in the demo" and "works at scale" is brutal.
My guess: they collected a ton of training data from those human reviewers. Whether they'll use it for a v2 or just write it off, who knows.
I really liked the local Amazon Fresh, until they discontinued "just walk out" and replaced it with those hellish smart carts. I scanned one item successfully with the cart, got completely stuck trying to get it to scan a second one, handed the cart back to the employee, and never went back.
I like Whole Foods because it feels warm and the food looks good. The Amazon stores felt like walking inside a vending machine and that is not how people want to buy dinner.
I know at some point they got caught basically paying people to watch cameras to figure out what products people we're grabbing. I'm sure were either at the point or very close to the point where AI can successfully do this basically 100% of the time.
So I doubt it's the tech aspect of this, more just the grossness a person feels walking into a store with Amazon's name on it. Compare this to whole foods.
When I saw the picture at the start of the article, I briefly thought they would do it like IKEA and let people pick the articles directly from the Amazon warehouse...
If you've ever been in a Fresh store, that's kind of what it was as well. I saw maybe 20% off-the-street customers, the rest were AMZN workers filling delivery orders.
Once their vision for "grab and go" vanished due to technological infeasibility [1] the entire premise for the stores vanished as well.
I suspect that they wanted to take a hail marry to see if somehow it was possible to get much greater efficiency compared to standard grocers, and it looks like that failed.
[1] it may come back. The technology is rapidly improving but they have bigger fish to fry ATM.
Reports said the “AI” was largely 1000+ people in India watching the cameras.
If Amazon actually managed to build AI that worked well at a decent cost point it would have been great since nobody likes those silly self checkout machines.
What’s amusing about all of this is that before it got leaked that it was basically a bunch of people in India watching cameras Amazon folks spoke about the tech like there was some super secret AI they developed. Since that story broke nobody there seems to want to talk about “just walk out” anymore.
I have little trust that a corporate behemoth will do right by me and refund the discrepancy at an unspecified later time as it says it will on checkout.
¹ Individuals manning a labyrinthine system of cameras and sensor fusion, like hawks, logging the precise moment you plop a Twix into your basket! Praise Bezos!
"Do things that don't scale."
It was as if they expected everyone to know what to do, but when I’d watch 99% of people just sort of looked at the store, saw the odd gate things, and then just shrugged and walked off. The stores were almost always completely empty amidst a busy concourse.
Even if the tech worked (reports say it didn’t work well) they completely missed the boat on creating a clear customer experience that navigated the new tech.
https://youtu.be/CNoa-9TBH30?si=Zl7hdZ1fBqeXHM_8
I remember WAY back in the day when Arby's implemented touch screen ordering (on CRTs!) and it was a very quirky process. An Arby's employee would sit behind the counter and stare at you while you spent 5 minutes poking a CRT display. Very slow and very impersonal. They discontinued them in a short period of time.
The Go stores were a great experience but they would certainly be uncomfortable for anyone other than early-adopter or tech-forward types of people. I would just walk in with my own bag, and put items directly from the shelf into the bag, and walk out the door. It was extremely convenient and fast once you got over how weird it felt.
I think they could have done a lot more in giving social clues on both the way in and way out.
I've watched so many people struggle to use these machines for so many different reasons. Pretty much anyone with a physical or cognitive disability will be better off with the cashier. Sucks they have to wait much longer for one now.
The main thing I use it for is convenient returns, which is why I’m disappointed in this news. I hardly ever buy things there other than things like gum or chips.
one minor downside (especially since I don't live on campus anymore) is that in order to walk around and peruse the shelves, I have to give them my payment info just to enter
That's one way to spin things I guess.
The interesting question isn't whether the tech was ready. It wasn't. The question is whether Amazon learned anything useful from the attempt.
Computer vision for retail checkout is a legitimate hard problem. Occlusion, similar-looking products, people changing their minds. I've worked on CV pipelines and the gap between "works in the demo" and "works at scale" is brutal.
My guess: they collected a ton of training data from those human reviewers. Whether they'll use it for a v2 or just write it off, who knows.
I know at some point they got caught basically paying people to watch cameras to figure out what products people we're grabbing. I'm sure were either at the point or very close to the point where AI can successfully do this basically 100% of the time.
So I doubt it's the tech aspect of this, more just the grossness a person feels walking into a store with Amazon's name on it. Compare this to whole foods.
I suspect that they wanted to take a hail marry to see if somehow it was possible to get much greater efficiency compared to standard grocers, and it looks like that failed.
[1] it may come back. The technology is rapidly improving but they have bigger fish to fry ATM.