"For years, Amazon Go stores stood at the pinnacle of retail store technology, showcasing a massive number of high-resolution digital cameras in each store that could visually track every customer and how that shopper interacted with every product. The stores showcased Amazon's technological superiority and brought an eerily human- and friction-free element to convenience store shopping. Unfortunately, the whole setup was also a poster child for technology that isn't profitable and has no realistic path to get there."
"(Sounds a lot like all those vendors now selling generative AI (genAI) and Agentic AI systems; the crown for chasing unreachable ROI has been officially passed.) The way it worked was wickedly simple: shoppers walked into a store by scanning a code from their Amazon app, the cameras and analytics took over, and the shopper grabbed what they wanted and left."
Amazon Go stores used large arrays of high-resolution cameras to visually track every customer and record how each shopper interacted with every product. The setup delivered an eerily human- and friction-free convenience shopping experience while demonstrating Amazon's technological capabilities. The model relied on app entry, continuous camera and analytics tracking, and automatic checkout when shoppers left. The system proved unprofitable and lacked a viable path to profitability. The failure serves as a caution about expensive, surveillance-heavy retail technology that cannot justify its costs. Similar dynamics are appearing among vendors selling generative AI and Agentic AI solutions chasing unreachable ROI.
Read at Computerworld
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