Incident 258: Australian Retailers Reportedly Captured Face Prints of Their Customers without Consent

Description: Major Australian retailers reportedly analyzed in-store footage to capture facial features of their customers without consent, which was criticized by consumer groups as creepy and invasive.

Tools

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Alleged: unknown developed an AI system deployed by The Good Guys , Kmart and Bunnings, which harmed The Good Guys customers , Kmart customers and Bunnings customers.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
258
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2022-05-13
Editors
Khoa Lam
Facial recognition technology: Major retailers secretly creating “face prints” of their customers, says Choice
smh.com.au · 2022

Major Australian retailers have been secretly capturing the faces of their customers without their knowledge, a consumer group investigation has found.

The Choice investigation examined 25 of the country’s biggest retailers and revealed Bun…

Kmart, Bunnings and The Good Guys using facial recognition technology in stores
choice.com.au · 2022

OAIC launches commission-initiated investigation into Kmart and Bunnings' use of facial recognition

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has opened investigations into the personal information handling practices of Bunnings…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.