Artificial intelligence (AI) is now part of everyday life in the modern world, even if we don’t always know when and where.
While AI platforms like ChatGPT, Siri and Alexa are among the most well-known, major Australian retailers like Woolworths and Bunnings are also using AI, in the form of software called Auror.
Auror chief executive Phil Thomson says the software is used to catch shoplifters.
“There are different tools that a retailer can choose to use,” he says.
“So, with an image, once that’s uploaded into the platform, that can then be referenced across crimes reported today, to see if it’s the same person who’s committed those other offences.”
Mr Thomson says the AI is powerful enough to spot crime and send alerts to security staff in real-time — but only if it detects wrongdoing.
“For a general customer, they would have no interaction with Auror at all, so they wouldn’t be impacted by it,” he says.
Retailers gathering information via AI
Retailers have been experimenting with AI and facial recognition for a few years.
Bunnings and Kmart are currently being investigated by Australia’s privacy watchdog for their use of another facial recognition software application.
But Mr Thompson says Auror works differently.
“We’re not doing live facial recognition; it doesn’t reference any parts of the internet at all,” he says.
“This is just the information that’s already been captured for a crime event that’s happened in a store.”
But emerging technologies expert Nicholas Davis, from the University of Technology Sydney, says retailers’ use of AI could still be of concern, due to a lag in privacy laws.
“We don’t have some of the nuance or the specifics about particularly sensitive types of data or combinations of data — like your license plate, plus what you’ve bought at the supermarket, plus which aisle you visited,” Professor Davis says.
“The combinations of those things can be really important to someone. And yet retailers are using that kind of information all the time for different purposes, particularly for marketing.
“Retailers that are tracking you in store, when that reveals who you are or other aspects of you and then is shared outside that organisation — that can be a breach of the Privacy Act.”
Ultimately, the onus of privacy is on retailers rather than a software company.
“We’re probably about 20 years behind where Europe and other countries are in terms of the rights that we have as consumers with regard to our private information,” Professor Davis says.
