Rite Aid banned from using AI facial recognition to curb shoplifting

Rite Aid is banned for five years from using artificial intelligence (AI) facial recognition to try to curb shoplifting, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said Tuesday.

In a press release, the agency said that the drugstore company is being banned from using the technology “for surveillance purposes” for the length of five years to settle charges by the FTC. The FTC charges “that the retailer failed to implement reasonable procedures and prevent harm to consumers in its use of facial recognition technology in hundreds of stores.”

“Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its order violations put consumers’ sensitive information at risk," Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement in the release. “Today’s groundbreaking order makes clear that the Commission will be vigilant in protecting the public from unfair biometric surveillance and unfair data security practices.”

The release noted a complaint filed in federal court Tuesday in which the FTC said the drugstore “failed to take reasonable measures to prevent harm to consumers from its use of facial recognition technology.

“Among other things, Rite Aid failed to consider or address foreseeable harms to consumers flowing from its use of facial recognition technology, failed to test or assess the technology’s accuracy before or after deployment, failed to enforce image quality standards that were necessary for the technology to function accurately, and failed to take reasonable steps to train and oversee the employees charged with operating the technology in Rite Aid stores,” the complaint reads.

The company has faced other legal woes from the federal government this year. Back in March, the Department of Justice announced that it was suing Rite Aid, accusing it of filling hundreds of thousands of prescriptions “for controlled substances with obvious red flags” in the midst of the opioid epidemic.