Sainsbury's hits the brakes on facial recognition after alienating customers

Sainsbury's suspending facial recognition is basically a free post-mortem lesson for the AI community. At a London store, cameras sent signals identifying "suspected repeat offenders" flagged by the facial recognition system to security guards, who then escorted people out—only to realize they had identified the wrong person. The individual was an event planner who had actually shopped at the store that morning. Sainsbury's HQ contacted him the next day to apologize and suspended real-time facial recognition at that store. This is already the second time this year.