Foodstuffs North Island (FSNI) has concluded its six-month facial recognition (FR) trial and found that the technology helped avoid 130 incidents of retail crime across 25 stores.
The FR technology, which FSNI says is 90 per cent accurate, detects if a person has a past record of offences through his facial features.
In these instances, staff will be alerted to confirm the facial match before acting on it.
The retailer said the technology identified over 1747 offenders and resulted in an 8 per cent quarterly reduction in incidents of retail crime across all FSNI stores, and a 42 per cent quarterly plunge in serious incidents.
“Stores trialling FR became around 40 per cent better at recognising trespassed people compared to our control stores,” said Chris Quin, CEO of FSNI.
“Information is crucial, and knowing an offender is in store means the team is informed and can decide on the safest response, which half the time is simply observing.”
FSNI has yet to receive the final report from independent research company Scarlatti and the results of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s inquiry into its use of FR before proceeding with the next step with regard to the use of the technology.
