Incident 665: Facial Recognition Misidentification at New World Westend in New Zealand

Description: A facial recognition system at New World Westend supermarket misidentified a Māori woman as a known offender during its trial. The woman was wrongfully accused of trespassing and experienced public embarrassment, raising concerns about racial bias and the technology's accuracy. The supermarket acknowledged its error and apologized.

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Alleged: Foodstuffs developed an AI system deployed by Foodstuffs and New World Westend, which harmed Te Ani Solomon and Māori Community.

Incident Stats

Incident ID

665

Report Count

Incident Date

2024-04-02

Editors

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

Supermarket facial recognition trial: Rotorua mother's "discrimination" ordeal

nzherald.co.nz

nzherald.co.nz · 2024

A Māori mum misidentified as a trespassed “thief” at a Rotorua supermarket trialling facial recognition technology says she felt “racially discriminated” against and embarrassed during the “horrible” birthday incident.

The supermarket, New …

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.

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Incident Date:

2024-04-17

Description of Incident Circumstances

It is not surprising that a supermarket trialling facial recognition technology mistakenly identified a Māori woman as a thief, Māori AI (artificial intelligence) and data experts say.

The woman was shopping at New World in Rotorua - one of 25 Foodstuffs’ North Island supermarkets trialling the technology - when she was approached by two staff members and asked to leave the store.

Inputs / Outputs

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/foodstuffs-facial-recognition-trial-maori-woman-mistaken-as-thief-not-surprising-experts-say/3DH6KYDHZ5GNVDUBHW5PARFGDM/