Amazon has rejected claims that its Just Walk Out cashless technology is powered by Indians and not artificial intelligence.
In a new blog post, the e-commerce giant said that the reports are false and that its systems rely on machine learning models.
Last week, reports emerged that Amazon is hiring about 1,000 employees in India to use Just Walk Out technology to monitor people's purchases in stores and verify their purchases.
According to the report, by 2022, Amazon employees will need to review about 700 out of every 1,000 transactions, which is common in the field of artificial intelligence.
Amazon insists that this information is false, but does not deny that no humans were involved in the process.
Amazon says its employees will be responsible for AI-generated annotations combined with real shopping data to improve the Just Walk Out system, not make it work.
“This is no different from any other AI system that places a high value on accuracy and where human reviewers are common,” Dilip Kumar, vice president of applications at AWS, wrote in a blog post.
Amazon's blog post also appears to confirm reports that the company will stop using its cashless Just Walk Out technology.
The company found that customers at large grocery stores prefer Dash Cart, a smart shopping cart that automatically collects items as they are placed in the cart.
Based on these results, Amazon said it has begun expanding Dash Cart to grocery stores and third-party grocery stores.
According to Amazon, Just Walk Out is suitable for stores that sell curated products.
Amazon plans to open more third-party Just Walk Out stores in 2024 than in previous years.
The company has also not given up on offering Just Walk Out cashless technology in supermarkets.
Amazon said it is improving latency and accuracy for fast, reliable receipts and is developing new algorithms and sensors.