Almax, an Italian company, is selling “EyeSee” mannequins — dummies that use facial recognition software to record people’s age, gender, race, and the length of time they spent around the mannequins. The information is then used to improve the store’s layouts, window displays, and promotions to entice customers to buy.
While overhead cameras have been in use in retail stores for decades, the EyeSee mannequins have hidden cameras that monitor passersby at eye-level. They use the facial recognition technology originally used to identify criminals at airports. But these dummies don’t come cheap. Each one costs EUR 4000 (USD 5130).
According to Bloomberg, several dozen EyeSee mannequins have been sold and are currently in use by five luxury companies in three European countries and the United States. Almax CEO Max Cantanese declined to disclose their clients. Benetton buys mannequins from Almax but denied using the EyeSee system. Burberry and Nordstrom likewise said that they don’t use the mannequins.
Privacy advocates are of course not happy with this technology. Some believe that profiling customers is illegal or at least unethical. Almax sees no privacy issues, however, since the EyeSee does not store images or biometric data.
Soon, the EyeSee mannequins may enable the retailers to eavesdrop on what the customers are saying about the products on display. Almax is adding microphones to the dummies and testing a technology that can recognize words.
On a related note, when I first saw this McDonald’s picture online, I thought it was a prank.
Apparently not. The picture was taken at the entrace of McDonald’s in Sydney Airport. It was posted in Twitter by David Litchfield, a researcher working for the security firm Accuvant.
“Your conversations will be audio and video recorded for quality assurance purposes.”
Hmm, some yummy fast food or privacy? Tough choices! What to choose? What to choose?
Image Credit: Fictures | CC-BY-2.0, via Flickr
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