AI branded him a shoplifter – he gave the payout to a foodbank

A comedy club worker has given his clientele plenty of new material to work with after becoming the second person this year to get wrongly kicked out of Sainsburys.

The UK’s second largest supermarket launched an AI facial recognition technology trial using Facewatch in selected stores this year, including the one that Matt Arnold was shopping in when he was wrongly singled out as a shoplifter.

The promoter, who also works as a freelance TV editor, had been working for Dulwich Hamlet Comedy Club next door to the store in South London, when he was surrounded by security and told to leave.

Recalling the incident on the club’s Instagram feed, Arnold – referred to in the posts as “Matt the promotor” – said he had been waiting at the self-service check-out with a trolley full of alcoholic drinks, soft drinks and snacks for performers when he was reprimanded by a member of staff.

“I waved to him asking to be checked. It’s not exactly how a shoplifter would act. He came over and said ‘we can’t serve you because of what happened earlier in the week.’”

Sainsbury’s staff refused to explain what he had done to trigger the system and escorted him off the premises, telling him to scan a QR code and contact the “dystopian-sounding” Facewatch security system.

Arnold added that because he still needed the items for the performers, asked if a colleague could over to come and pay for the goods

“They looked at each other confused and then said “I suppose so.”

Compensation given to charity

The next day Sainsbury’s told Arnold that he had been wrongly ejected because of human error, as there had been “a shoplifter in the shop but the store staff targeted the wrong person.”

He was later given a £150 goodwill voucher from the store as compensation, which he donated to a community foodbank charity.

It seems that AI facial recognition, as well as being extremely morally questionable, also isn’t very good,

- Matt Arnold, Dulwich Hamlet Comedy Club, said.

In series of Instagram posts.Arnold also questioned why, in previous incidents since Sainsbury's started using Facewatch, the company has also blamed human error.

He met with one of the store's managers to get a fuller picture of how Facewatch actually works.

"When someone – in this case me – is identified, a 2D image flashes up on the store's iPhone. But, and this is wild, for GDPR reasons, it disappears after a few seconds once staff have seen it," he explains.

"So even the store manager has no idea whether staff saw an image of someone who looked a bit like me and cocked up, or whether it was actually me and the AI cocked up."

Not-so-human error?

"The staff couldn't check the image against me once I'd been collared. Which, even though I'm not a huge fan of their work, doesn't seem ideal."

Arnold claims the security guards' body cameras weren't recording when the incident took place, so there was no backup footage to determine what happened.

I guess it was 'human error,' ...but in the same way, if you sent an army to fight a heavily armed opponent with water pistols, it would be their 'human error' when they lost,

- Matt Arnold, Dulwich Hamlet Comedy Club, explained.

Earlier AI mistakes

In February this year, shopper Warren Rajah was wrongly identified and kicked out of another Sainsbury’s branch in South London without explanation.

Rajah was told to abandon his shopping and escorted outside – an experience the data professional described as "Orwellian."

Despite these errors, in July started rolling out facial recognition cameras to 150 more stores across the country.

According to the retailer, the AI-powered system has a 99.98% accuracy rate, and a trial showed that the technology stopped 9 in 10 repeat offenders from coming back and trying again.