Amazon was hit with a class-action lawsuit for failing to alert customers at Amazon GO convenience stores in New York that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology.
Alfredo Perez, the attorney in charge of the suit, said Amazon failed to inform customers that facial recognition was being used in its stores, while New York requires businesses to post signs when tracking customers’ facial scans or biometric information such as fingerprints, thanks to a 2021 law.
Launched in 2018, the Amazon GO convenience store promises that customers can take what they want directly from the shelf, without the traditional checkout process, and the account will be automatically debited when they leave.
The lawsuit claims that for Amazon Go to successfully track customers and the products they purchase, it must continuously monitor customers’ bodies and continuously collect biometric information, but Amazon has only recently posted notices on the use of this technology, and it has been since the relevant laws took effect. More than a year has passed.
Amazon has yet to comment.
