Kroger’s plans to roll out facial recognition tools at its grocery stores is attracting increased criticism from lawmakers, who warn that it could be exploited to increase the prices certain individuals pay for food and put customers’ personal data at risk. In a letter this week to Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said the plans, which involve using facial recognition tools in digital displays to target advertising to customers and collect information on them, potentially pave the way for biased pricing discrimination. “Studies have shown that facial recognition technology is flawed and can lead to discrimination in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods,” Tlaib wrote in the letter, which was posted on social media Tuesday. “The racial biases of facial recognition technology are well documented and should not be extended into our grocery stores.”[1]
A facial recognition system is a technology potentially capable of matching a human face from a digital image or a video frame against a database of faces. Such a system is typically employed to authenticate users through ID verification services and works by pinpointing and measuring facial features from a given image.
Kroger is the largest grocery store chain in the country with nearly 3,000 stores and $3.1 billion in profits in 2023. Kroger and other retailers already use electronic shelving labels instead of paper labels to rapidly adjust prices based on a variety of factors, including time of purchase, where a grocery store is located and other data. The plan to use facial recognition technology could allow the retailer to build individual profiles on customers, based on data like their gender and shopping habits.
In an August letter sent to McMullen about the same plans, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bob Casey (D-PA) said they were concerned about the chain building “personalized profiles of each customer, and then use those profiles ‘to determine how much price hiking each of us can tolerate,’ quickly updating and displaying the customer’s maximum willingness to pay on the digital price tag.”
The use of facial recognition tools in Kroger stores also raises concerns about how Kroger intends to “adequately” safeguard customer data, the Warren and Casey letter said. A Kroger spokesperson said in a statement that the company’s business model is built on a “foundation of lowering prices to attract more customers.” “To be clear, Kroger does not and has never engaged in ‘surge pricing,’” the statement said. “Any test of electronic shelf tags is designed to lower prices for more customers where it matters most.”
The Federal Trade Commission is suing to block Kroger from acquiring rival grocery chain Albertsons in a $24.6 billion proposed deal it announced in 2022, arguing that the controversial proposed deal is anti-competitive. Tlaib asked McMullen to respond to several questions, including whether targeted price adjustments will be offered only to certain customers and whether consumers will have the option to opt out of being “surveilled and discriminated against.”
Back in 2019, Red Sky reported that China was quickly progressing in facial recognition technology and its use within its country. That usage is not beling pushed inside the US.
See: https://redskyalliance.org/xindustry/chinese-progress-in-facial-recognition-and-surveillance
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[1] https://therecord.media/kroger-facial-recognition-lawmakers-concerns/
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