Yes. You need to have the Amazon Go app installed on your phone, and you scan your phone at what looks like a turnstile to enter the store, from the store's PR videos. Then the store keeps track of what you pick up using computer vision, your phone and various sensors, and charges everything you walk out with to your account.
Unless you can avoid the requirement to load an app and scan it to get into the store, walking out of the store with goods stuffed in your jacket or bag isn't shoplifting, because the store knows you picked those things up and is charging them to your Amazon account.
So children are not allowed in the store? What's stopping someone from just stuffing their kid full of high end goods and asking them to wait in the car?
I don't know how they designed it, but if they use anything like a phone-unlocked turnstile or revolving door to let people in, they might just count every person that comes in until the gate closes again as being attached to the account of the person that opened the gate. So when any of them leave with something, that's a charge to you.
I could see it being a case of scan, pass the phone back to child/whoever's with you (or scan it their side for them), then they're all registered on that account. A bit like plane digital boarding cards. That does remove a potential fraud signal though so maybe they have a better idea.
Everyone entering the store has to be scanned in. A parent could bring a child in, but they are scanned in on the parent's account. Similar to how at some offices, visitors are scanned in using the employee's badge. At least, that is my understanding of how it works.
What about using worthless phones and masks? For under $5 I can get an Android or a dozen of them, load them up with this app, and be good to go. Need a credit card? No trouble, get a prepaid card for $1.95 at the corner store, load 5 dollars on it, auth it with the Amazon account, and pull $4.99 off it. Then go get some steaks on the house!
There's nobody guarding the doors at the average grocery store. You can walk in and walk out with a steak without anyone stopping you, and without having to buy prepaid debit cards and make online accounts in advance. Far fewer tracks to cover. They also don't have every square inch of the store covered in face-detecting cameras, like Amazon's store, making pretty much anywhere else a better target once you're set on shoplifting. A grocery store probably won't even notice the missing steak, where the Amazon store will have timestamped logs of every unpaid product leaving the store and video of it happening to pass on to authorities.
Wow, you are unfamiliar with retail. Sure, you can probably steal small things, but repeatedly stealing larger objects (book size and above) is generally a pain in the ass. Hence why Costco & Sams Club make better targets than average stores, its much easier to throw something in the cart of high value and slip it by.
Booster bags will be a major issue for Amazon's stores if they ever launch this.
> Booster bags will be a major issue for Amazon's stores
None of the products in Amazon's stores carry any kind of tag, so there's nothing for a booster bag to block.
They're using computer vision to identify when a customer takes a product off a shelf, or puts a product back on the shelf. That customer's virtual cart is updated in turn, and charged after the customer leaves the store. The people are what's being tracked going in and out, not the products.
I don't understand what this gets you. You'd be on camera, accessing the store using your own amazon account, wearing a mask. Do you think you wouldn't be caught?
Unless you can avoid the requirement to load an app and scan it to get into the store, walking out of the store with goods stuffed in your jacket or bag isn't shoplifting, because the store knows you picked those things up and is charging them to your Amazon account.