I had to check that this was real. Instead of self-checkout registers where you scan the barcode of the items (a tech that's been around for a while and, while not perfect, works pretty damned well), the Circle K chain has replaced it with one that just looks at what you have and tries to suss it out. And even then, comes up with one of the most ridiculous results imaginable.
This is such a bad case of "using AI for the sake of using AI."
Our local Circle K has this system. It just sits there being unused.
The proper way to do this is to have AI be the fallback in case the barcode is unreadable. In the UI, they need to have a button that says something like "no barcode" or "unreadable barcode" and then the AI can look up the item and apply the missing barcode to the check out session.
what this guy said
Earlier this year I was in Houston at a stadium for a sports event and checkout at several of the concessions stands were AI managed -- you swipe a card when you enter and they just had cameras watching what you took and charged your card. It was unnerving.
While the barcode scanning method is pretty foolproof, I have a feeling this is like early stage AI video generation -- looks stupid, but in short order it will be ubiquitous and efficient.
I remember a chain trying to experiment with this method of checkout decades ago. Apparently, it didn't work very well.