Supermarket goes hi-tech to stop kids buying booze and cigs

Supermarket chain Budgens has begun trialling facial-recognition technology in one of its London stores in a bid to thwart attempts by the city’s teenagers to buy alcopops and smokes illegally. The trial uses a face-recognition system developed by firms OmniPerception and Charton. The unnamed Budgens store now has a camera …

[John Sims]

Seems flawed

The beeb site has an article on this. From their picture one of the measurements appears to be the length of each eyebrow. Bit of trimming me thinks would fool the system. This could prove quite entertaining if the youth of today start hacking away at them randomly!

[Rob]

so

does it actually try to tell the age by their facial features or does it just look them up on this database, because no under 18-year old could happen to know the cashier, who could then give them the thumbs up, marking them on the system as over 18, could they?

[jon]

Talk about a solution in search of a problem.

Why not just ask them for ID? No ID, no sale. Pretty simple stuff really.

[Kieran Marsh]

E-Z

So you take a pickie of your mate's older bruvver on your phone coz he's already, like eighteen, right, then you print his face out and paste it to the top of your hoodie. Then you walk past the camera with your head down, the cashier won't even ask your age coz compu'er sez yessss.

Well wicked!