Sainsbury's staff eject wrong shopper after facial recognition alert – again

UK supermarket Sainsbury's temporarily halted live facial recognition (LFR) at one of its stores after staff mistakenly expelled a shopper, marking the second incident this year. Matt Arnold, a 46-year-old comedy promoter, was ejected from the East Dulwich, London store on August 6 after staff, responding to a Facewatch LFR alert, mistook him for a suspected thief.

Arnold was using a self-service checkout and had called an assistant to approve an alcohol purchase. Instead, two Sainsbury's managers approached him, refused service, and linked him to a prior incident. Arnold was told he had been identified by the AI, leading to his forced exit. Sainsbury's acknowledged the incident was due to human error, not the LFR technology.

The company apologized to Arnold and assured customers Facewatch's system has a 99.98% accuracy rate with every match reviewed by a manager. Facewatch, the facial recognition provider, also denied any fault, stating their system worked as intended and a correct alert was sent to Sainsbury's, but the error occurred in how the retailer handled and communicated the alert.

Both Sainsbury's and Facewatch are reviewing their processes and staff training following this incident and a similar case involving Warren Rajah, who was wrongly removed from a Sainsbury's store in Elephant and Castle earlier this year.