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In a letter Friday to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said the plans — which involve using facial recognition tools in digital displays to target advertising to customers and collect information on them — potentially pave the way for biased pricing discrimination.

“Studies have shown that facial recognition technology is flawed and can lead to discrimination in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods,” Tlaib wrote in the letter, which was posted on social media Tuesday. “The racial biases of facial recognition technology are well documented and should not be extended into our grocery stores.”

Kroger is the largest grocery store chain in the country with nearly 3,000 stores and $3.1 billion in profits in 2023. Kroger and other retailers already use electronic shelving labels instead of paper labels to rapidly adjust prices based on a variety of factors, including time of purchase, where a grocery store is located and other data.

The plan to use facial recognition technology could allow the retailer to build individual profiles on customers, based on data like their gender and shopping habits.

In an August letter sent to McMullen about the same plans, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) said they were concerned about the chain building “personalized profiles of each customer, and then use those profiles ‘to determine how much price hiking each of us can tolerate,’ quickly updating and displaying the customer’s maximum willingness to pay on the digital price tag.”

The use of facial recognition tools in Kroger stores also raises concerns about how Kroger intends to “adequately” safeguard customer data, the Warren and Casey letter said.

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[-] whotookkarl@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

Surge pricing=price gouging, there is no difference

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[-] PushButton@lemmy.world 6 points 17 hours ago

That might be ugly, but something like that...

[-] PunnyName@lemmy.world 16 points 22 hours ago

And it definitely won't negatively affect people of color, at all, will it?

[-] EndOfLine@lemm.ee 22 points 1 day ago

Well, they wrote some letters. There's nothing more the nations law makers can do to protect citizens from corporate greed and price gouging. /s

[-] dan@upvote.au 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

In the USA, facial recognition isn't legal in some states (e.g. the company needs written permission from the individual to collect their facial data in Illinois), and other stores have had issues with facial recognition (e.g. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/12/rite-aid-banned-using-ai-facial-recognition-after-ftc-says-retailer-deployed-technology-without) so I'm not sure how Kroger think they'll succeed with this.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Honestly, they'll probably miss that and pay massive fines in Illinois. It seems to be the traditional approach by companies that get into facial recognition to also not bother to listen to anyone who could have told them not to.

[-] rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com 14 points 23 hours ago

What's the benefit to the customer here? Idk if a store where I live started doing this, I would just stop going there. I know that can be difficult with the grocery monopolies in a lot of places, but I would try my hardest.

I think facial recognition should be banned outright because it's highly inaccurate, racially biased, and used improperly by law enforcement. But in cases like this, even just a ban for all non-law enforcement applications would be really helpful. People don't benefit from this! Just corporations, and barely so.

In my work as a government contractor, I witnessed the use of facial recognition for access control (getting into certain parts of a building) in exactly 1 building (of several dozens) and it was so completely unnecessary that I was left wondering what kind of nepotism or budget surplus lead to the implementation of such a lame security tool.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 11 points 19 hours ago

What's the benefit to the customer here?

There's no intended benefit to the customer.

[-] rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com 5 points 19 hours ago

Yes, it was a rhetorical question. Thanks for your input.

[-] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 6 points 17 hours ago

I still get the meaningless Internet points though, right?!

[-] socphoenix@midwest.social 13 points 23 hours ago

The problem is everything is a massive chain so as one goes, so goes them all so to speak. I have Kroger, Albertsons, and Walmart as my only choices for grocery store. I don’t see any chance that if Kroger does this Albertsons (assuming the proposed Kroger Albertsons merger fails) and Walmart don’t do the same.

Tl;dr it doesn’t need to benefit the customer if the customer has no real choice in where they shop

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 0 points 8 hours ago

Thats the beauty of oligopolies... The faq u gonna do about ut peasant? Go to a shop mile further to be profiled by their corpo surveillance apparatus?

[-] Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net 10 points 1 day ago

There's no way lawmakers stop this, so anyone know a way to wear a mask in public without looking like a lunatic?

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 18 points 1 day ago

I haven’t stopped wearing an N95 in public since 2020. I’m not going to say nobody has ever been weird to me about it, but the vast majority of people are more interested in my colorful hat than my mask. YMMV depending on location.

[-] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

That’s a good idea. I don’t shop at Kroger but it’s only a matter of time for others to try this.

[-] uid0gid0@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

You could just become a fan of Insane Clown Posse

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[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 3 points 20 hours ago

So this is where they draw the line? Interesting choice...

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this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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