Asda has revealed whether it uses facial recognition technology at its self-checkout machines. The retailer issued a statement after a video about CCTV cameras at the automated tills went viral on social media.
The video has attracted hundreds of thousands of views on Facebook and is also on TikTok. In the footage, a woman says: "What they’re basically happening, and this is my viewpoint, you’ve got a picture of your face, your debit card information and everything you’ve bought. Now, this is for as far as I’m concerned, targeted advertising…But I’ve never given anybody permission to take my data in that way. And under GDPR, unless you’ve given permission, they cannot do it. [sic]"
However, Asda has now responded, BristolLive reports. The charity Full Fact, which checks claims made on social media, approached the supermarket to find out how the cameras work.
A spokesperson for Asda told Full Fact the machines don’t have the capability to store visual image data and act solely as an anti-theft deterrent, so there is no footage recorded which could be used for targeted ads.
The spokesperson said: “We have no technology in our stores that could take an image, store it, and then compare it to other images to spot when a ‘recognised’ face comes into our store. The cameras use AI to focus on faces—you might see a green box around the face—but again this footage isn’t recorded or stored.”
They said "traditional CCTV", which does record footage, is used elsewhere in stores. Full Fact has flagged the original claim as 'false' and said: "False claims about data collection can cause people to feel unnecessarily unsafe going about daily activities and make misinformed decisions about how to live."
