For most, opting for the self-checkout at a grocery store means not having to interact with another human. But if you're trying to buy alcohol, they inevitably have to come up to confirm your age and override the machine.
One shopper showed that this may become a thing of the past though, leaving him publicly embarrassed in the process. In a TikTok video taken at a Publix supermarket, a man can be seen buying a bottle of wine using the self-checkout option.
He clearly looked over the age of 21, but was still left shocked when the machine spoke up. "Age verification not needed per camera analysis", the machine said.
Posting under the username @tallfreek, the video was uploaded with the caption "I'm never using self-checkout again".
The man looks around stunned at the machine's response, and the speed at which it gave it, appearing to question exactly what had just happened.
As self-checkout options have become both more popular and widespread since the Covid pandemic, there are tech companies hard at work to deliver solutions on just how to make the option more attractive for shoppers and retailers alike.
According to Grocery Drive, one of the developments being looked into is age verification. While self-checkout often presents a quicker option for shoppers, lines can still be held up when things such as alcohol, tobacco or certain medications are purchased.
Usually, a store worker will have to come over, determine whether the check the customer's ID and then validate the purchase.
This not only slows down the lines and creates a bottleneck, it also means having to have more staff on in the area, undoing the labour-saving benefits of self-checkout machines.
But now, startups specialising in computer-based image recognition have been investigating how to automate the age confirmation process in an effort to speed up purchases.
Austria-based company Anyline is testing mobile ID-verification tech which was developed for police officers in grocery stores across the US, South America, and Europe. The technology compares an individual's face with a verified image associated with the person's age - such as driving licences or passports.
The technology has also been used by banks as a way for people to open an account without having to show up to the branch in person, according to CEO Lukas Kinigadner. According to him, there are two ways in which supermarkets can incorporate automated age-verification technology.
One option would be for a shopper to add their driver's license or other photo ID to the retailer's own shopping app, with their face then being 'scanned' at the point of purchase to allow facial recognition software to match the image and authorise the transaction without an employee.
Another option would be for retailers to use camera-equipped security gates to ensure people permitted to enter a designated area of the store meet the minimum age requirements for purchase of those items, according to Mr Kinigadner. He even went so far as to say that the technology would be more accurate than humans at confirming identity.
"If a person checks the ID and the person's appearance, the failure rate for humans is stunningly high," Mr Kinigadner told Grocery Drive. By using machine learning, or Artificial Intelligence, it's "very seldom that we generate false positives."
