Foodstuffs AI failures

Foodstuffs facial recognition misidentifies Māori shopper at Rotorua New World

On 2024-04-02 a Māori woman shopping at New World Westend in Rotorua was approached by store staff and told she had been trespassed after a facial recognition alert from a Foodstuffs trial. The customer offered three forms of photo ID but was still asked to leave; Foodstuffs called it a genuine case of human error and said it reported the incident to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Experts and the Privacy Commissioner raised concerns about bias and accuracy in the trialled system, which was trained on international data and not specifically on New Zealand populations.

Confidence

High (multi-source, primary)