A British Gas Station Chain Is Installing 'Creepy' Face-Scanning Cameras To Track Consumers
Cameras at each register will scan customers' facial features to determine their gender and age range, and then a targeted ad will pop up on a nearby screen intended to spur an impulse buy, the BBC reports.
The system is 95% accurate in spotting men and 87% accurate in spotting women, according to an independent study on the website of French company Quividi, which developed the software.
The system, which is licensed by the British firm Amscreen, has raised some privacy concerns.
British privacy group NO2ID's has compared it to something out of the movie Minority Report.
"A lot of customers will find it a bit creepy and intrusive," the group's campaign manager, James Baker, told The Yorkshire Post. "Our concern is that they will be scanning people's faces without their permission and judging their behavior."
In response to those concerns, a Quividi spokesperson told The Guardian newspaper that the system does not store images of customers.
"It can detect if it's seeing a face, but it never records the image or biomorphological information or traits," Ke Quang, chief operating officer of Quividi, told The Guardian. "It picks up if it's seeing a man or a woman, the amount of time they pay attention to the screen, and their presence in front of the screen. The key thing though is that it never records or remembers any information."
Supermarket giant Mondelez International - which makes Oreos, Wheat Thins, and a host of other snack foods - is developing a similar technology provided by Microsoft's Kinect called "smart shelves."
Coca-Cola has also invested in facial recognition technology. The company has used Affdex, developed by Massachusetts firm Affectiva, to track consumers emotional reactions to ads as they watch them on TV or see them on a computer screen.
Here's a video on how Quividi's technology works: