Great Britain
In England, a camera system will soon be used at supermarket checkouts to estimate the age of customers when they buy alcohol
A customer at a self-checkout counter in a supermarket
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Self-checkout in modern supermarkets is popular with many customers. But as soon as alcohol is bought, someone has to come and check the age of the buyer. In England they are working on a solution for this.
They are still the exception in Germany, but they already exist here and there: self-checkout tills in supermarkets and discounters. Instead of leaving the scanning of the goods to the cashier:innen and then paying, the customers here swipe their purchases themselves over the scanner and pay by card or at a machine, without the help of an employee. At least as long as they don’t want to buy alcohol. Because then someone has to come along to check the age of the customer.
Whether someone prefers to pay for their purchases at a normal checkout with a real person or uses self-checkout is of course a matter of taste, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. But one thing is certain: If you want to do the scanning and numbers yourself, then it should be easy and without the help of the supermarket employees. Even if someone buys a bottle of wine. Of course, the age still has to be checked somehow – in England they are currently working on a solution.
Supermarket assured: No facial recognition
In cooperation with the British Home Office, a system was developed in which a camera is supposed to assess the customer’s age. Several large supermarket chains now want to test this in their branches. However, customers must first agree to the camera filming them and estimating their age. As before, if they are classified as under 25 years old, they must wait for an employee to check their ID before they can buy alcohol.
The developers of the system point out that the photos taken by the cameras are not saved. In addition, it is not a matter of “facial recognition”, i.e. face recognition in which the images are compared with various databases. Something like this has already been tested at the British supermarket chain Co-Op, where cameras are supposed to recognize customers who have been registered with the police for theft or “anti-social behavior”. This test was heavily criticized.
Source: BBC