Synopsis-
“Rite Aid, a US drugstore chain, has decided to discontinue the use of AI-driven facial recognition technology following charges by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it was misused and causing harm to consumers.”
Rite Aid has settled with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by agreeing to a five-year restriction on using face recognition technology for surveillance.
FTC Bans Rite Aid from Using Facial Recognition Technology
Rite Aid, a US drugstore chain, has decided to discontinue the use of AI-driven facial recognition technology following charges by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that it was misused and causing harm to consumers. The system was used to detect shoplifters from 2012 to 2020, but the FTC found that it wrongly identified specific customers as previous shoplifters, leading to a disproportionate impact on people of color.
Rite Aid had implemented AI-powered, face-scanning technology in hundreds of its stores to identify people on the surveillance footage. The purpose was to combat shoplifting and address other customer-related issues. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) criticized the company for lack of proper safeguards and the technology’s history of inaccuracies and racial bias. Due to these issues, Rite Aid staff often wrongfully accused innocent customers of theft.
Rite Aid, a popular store, used facial recognition technology to scan the faces of customers as they entered the store. The technology compared the scanned faces with a database of individuals suspected or convicted of shoplifting. If the system found a match, the store staff was alerted to monitor that particular shopper closely. However, due to the low-quality images in the database, the system produced unreliable matches. The photos in the database were of poor quality, taken from grainy surveillance footage and cell phone cameras, which often led to staff following customers or calling the police without witnessing any crime. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had raised concerns about Rite Aid’s facial recognition system and its potential to infringe on customers’ privacy.
According to federal officials, Rite Aid failed to inform its customers about the use of facial recognition technology. They also instructed their employees to keep this usage confidential from both the customers and the media. The FTC claimed that Rite Aid worked together with two unnamed companies to create a “persons of interest” database. This database contained tens of thousands of images.
