Anti Wal-Mart Shoplifting AI by Everseen

Does it work?  Am a frequent user of self checkout systems and am always thinking of the implications vs other methods.  Here a piece from Wired.

Walmart Employees Are Out to Show Its Anti-Theft AI Doesn't Work in Wired

The retailer denies there is any widespread issue with the software, but a group expressed frustration—and public health concerns.

IN JANUARY, MY coworker received a peculiar email. The message, which she forwarded to me, was from a handful of corporate Walmart employees calling themselves the “Concerned Home Office Associates.” (Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, is often referred to as the Home Office.) While it’s not unusual for journalists to receive anonymous tips, they don’t usually come with their own slickly produced videos.

The employees said they were “past their breaking point” with Everseen, a small artificial intelligence firm based in Cork, Ireland, whose technology Walmart began using in 2017. Walmart uses Everseen in thousands of stores to prevent shoplifting at registers and self-checkout kiosks. But the workers claimed it misidentified innocuous behavior as theft, and often failed to stop actual instances of stealing.

They told WIRED they were dismayed that their employer—one of the largest retailers in the world—was relying on AI they believed was flawed. One worker said that the technology was sometimes even referred to internally as “NeverSeen” because of its frequent mistakes. WIRED granted the employees anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press.

The workers said they had been upset about Walmart’s use of Everseen for years, and claimed colleagues had raised concerns about the technology to managers, but were rebuked. They decided to speak to the press, they said, after a June 2019 Business Insider article reported Walmart’s partnership with Everseen publicly for the first time. The story described how Everseen uses AI to analyze footage from surveillance cameras installed in the ceiling, and can detect issues in real time, such as when a customer places an item in their bag without scanning it. When the system spots something, it automatically alerts store associates.

“Everseen overcomes human limitations. By using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, computer vision systems, and big data we can detect abnormal activity and other threats,” a promotional video referenced in the story explains. “Our digital eye has perfect vision and it never needs a day off.”

In an effort to refute the claims made in the Business Insider piece, the Concerned Home Office Associates created a video, which purports to show Everseen’s technology failing to flag items not being scanned in three different Walmart stores. Set to cheery elevator music, it begins with a person using self-checkout to buy two jumbo packages of Reese’s White Peanut Butter Cups. Because they’re stacked on top of each other, only one is scanned, but both are successfully placed in the bagging area without issue. ... "  (More detail behind paywall) 

Crime Pattern Recogition

More on crime detection, here with occurrence patterns by location and other 

NYPD analyst sitting speaking to the camera NYPD Says Its New Software Is Helping Analysts Track Crime Patterns More Quickly 
The Los Angeles Times
By Michael R. Sisak

The New York Police Department (NYPD) is using pattern-recognition software so analysts can compare robberies, larcenies, and thefts to hundreds of thousands of crimes logged in the department's database, finding matches faster than they would manually. The Patternizr algorithm was launched in December 2016, and NYPD assistant commissioner of data analytics Evan Levine said, "The more easily that we can identify patterns in...crimes, the more quickly we can identify and apprehend perpetrators." Levine and co-developer Alex Chohlas-Wood trained Patternizr on 10 years of patterns that the department had manually identified. Patternizr accurately reproduced old crime patterns a third of the time, and matched parts of patterns 80% of the time. The software compares factors like method of entry, type of goods stolen, and distance between crimes, and reduces possible racial bias by not counting the race of suspects when looking for patterns. ... "

Spotting Shoplifters Before they Steal

Bias likely?  Type of training data?  Ethical?  Use of deep learning against video snippets is increasing.

These Cameras Can Spot Shoplifters Even Before They Steal 
Bloomberg   By Lisa Du; Ayaka Maki

Japanese startup Vaak has developed artificial intelligence (AI) software that looks for potential shoplifters on video surveillance footage. The software searches for indicators such as fidgeting, restlessness, and other potentially suspicious body language. Last year, Vaak helped catch a shoplifter at a convenience store in Yokohama, Japan. The startup had set up its software in the shop as a test case, and was able to identify previously undetected shoplifting activity. The ability to detect and analyze unusual human behavior also has other applications. Vaak is developing a video-based self-checkout system, and wants to use the video to collect information on how consumers interact with items in the store to help shops display products more effectively. The software could also be used in public spaces to detect other kinds of suspicious behavior.  ... "