Innocent consumers accused of wrongdoing by AI system: Warnings over Facewatch in shops like Sainsbury’s, Budgens and B&M

Blameless shoppers are being accused of theft as stores install AI camera technology, critics have warned – but creators insist there is near-100 per cent accuracy. 

The British Retail Consortium has told of £1.8billion being spent on crime prevention measures in 2024 amid a nationwide shoplifting epidemic. 

Facial recognition cameras are flagging record numbers of crime suspects a week in the UK, new figures have revealed – including more than 2,000 a day in the week leading up to Christmas.

Various high street retailers are now using Facewatch biometric technology, which sends an alert to staff if a so-called subject of interest on a watchlist enters the store.

But campaign groups have warned about invasions of privacy and also wrongful ‘blacklisting’ of people accused of shoplifting despite being innocent of any offence. 

One B&M customer Jenny has told of being placed on a watchlist and barred from a return to her local store in Birmingham, having been falsely accused of previously stealing a bottle of wine.

The company has since apologised and blamed human error. 

Jenny told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘It’s like we’ve made retail managers and technology companies judge, jury and executioner, with no legal due process.’

She described how a security official blocked her way into the store, telling her: ‘You’re on Facewatch as you’ve obviously stolen something – you’ve come up on my phone.’

Jenny added: ‘I turned around and said, “I’ve never stolen anything in my life – I don’t know what you’re talking about”.

‘I was humiliated, really humiliated, and I think when someone says, “If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” – if you look at my situation, you’ve got everything to worry about.’

A spokesperson for B&M said: ‘This was a simple case of human error, and we apologised.

‘As the BRC has reported, UK retailers are experiencing over 2,000 incidents of violence and aggressive shoplifting in their stores every day, and we make no apology for using technology like Facewatch that fully complies with UK GDPR and can help keep our store colleagues safe.’

Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch has raised concerns about similar cases, including a 64-year-old woman accused of stealing less than £1 worth of paracetamol and blacklisted from shops in her area and a man alleged to have shoplifted from a store in Cardiff before being cleared by a CCTV review.

And last year Danielle Horan, from Manchester, was ordered out of two separate shops after being falsely accused of stealing toilet roll – prompting her to call for a ban on AI anti-theft technology.

She told ITV’s Good Morning Britain how she was alleged to have taken items worth £10, with a description added to a facial recognition watchlist.

The alert stated: ‘Female enters store pushing a trolley. She picks items put them inside the trolley including multi packs of tissue papers. She heads to the till declares items to pay but fails to pay for the two packs of papers which are still inside the trolley. Crime committed. Leaves with items.’ 

It was later discovered that she had bought and paid for the toilet roll on a previous visit, with Facewatch saying: ‘Let’s be clear, Danielle did not commit a crime. But we were informed by a member of staff that a crime has been committed. We’re now making inquiries with the member of staff and their manager.’ 

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old known as Sara – not her real name – was misidentified by facial recognition technology as a suspected shoplifter in a Home Bargains store in Manchester in February 2024, Big Brother Watch also flagged.

She told of being informed by staff she was a thief and banned from store across the UK, before ultimately being in the clear.

She said: ‘I was visiting Home Bargains and had only just got into the entrance of the store when a member of staff came up to me and told me I had to leave the store immediately because I was a thief.

‘I had my bag searched and was escorted out of the shop, and was told due to facial recognition I was banned from shops across the whole country.

‘I have never stolen in my life and so I was confused, upset and humiliated to be labelled as a criminal in front of a whole shop of people.

‘I think it is wrong and dystopian to treat every shopper like a potential criminal who needs to have their face scanned. Shops should be banned from using this technology.’

Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo told the Daily Mail: ‘Shoplifters should be held to account but the proper way to do that in a democracy is through the criminal justice system rather than private AI systems that are dangerously faulty, putting the general public at risk.

‘Members of the public are now being put on secret watchlists, without their knowledge and without being shown any evidence, and then electronically blacklisted from their high streets.

‘Big Brother Watch has helped numerous innocent individuals who have had to chase down these private companies to prove their innocence and fight to get themselves off these opaque facial recognition systems. In some cases, people have been publicly humiliated and thrown out of stores, having a serious impact on their lives, jobs and relationships.

‘In the rest of Europe, live facial recognition is banned for private companies’ use and supermarkets have been fined millions of euros for doing so. The UK is a complete outlier for failing to rein in private facial recognition companies and the Government should take urgent action to ban its use for general surveillance of the public.’

In total, Facewatch sent 43,602 alerts to subscriber retail stores during last July – more than double the number for the same month the previous year, 18,564.

This was the first time the 10,000 alerts-a-week milestone was reached – while the tally has since soared to more than 50,000 last month.

Among the traders who have welcomed IT technology to deter shoplifters are married couple Vince and Fiona Malone, who run Tenby Stores in Pembrokeshire, Wales.

They installed AI equipment in September 2023, saying that thieves were costing them £26,000 a year while they struggled to persuade police to take cases forward. 

The technology recognises suspicious gestures – such as goods being stuffed into bags – and sends a message to workers containing footage and the area in which the theft is taking place.

Mrs Malone told the Today programme: ‘If people steal in Sainsbury’s or Tesco it affects us because all of the prices go up. If people steal from here, potentially we think about, do we carry on?’

Mr Malone added: ‘It’s about us making a stand and saying, do you know what, enough is enough and this has got to stop.

‘It pings in our ears within about five seconds. It’s giving us control back. It’s not about Big Brother – it’s about us as a community saying we want to be safe, it’s about being proud of where we live.’ 

Meanwhile, Sainsbury’s told of plans to introduce facial recognition across its UK shops as it launched the controversial technology in its first stores.

The UK’s second largest supermarket chain informed staff in two stores last autumn of an eight-week trial before potentially rolling out the technology nationwide.

Sainsbury’s has said the technology was part of its efforts to identify shoplifters and curb a sharp increase in retail crime in recent years – though privacy campaigners described the plans as ‘chilling’.

Use of facial recognition in shops has been criticised in recent years, with rival Asda facing thousands of complaints after launching its own similar trial earlier this year.

Bosses at Sainsbury’s, which has more than 1,400 shops across the country, said the plans were ‘not about monitoring colleagues’ or customers.

The retailer started using the technology last September in its Sydenham superstore in south-east London and its Bath Oldfield Sainsbury’s Local store in Somerset, in collaboration with Facewatch.

Fellow retailers Budgens, Home Bargains, Flannels and Sports Direct have reportedly used similar Facewatch technology in stores to identify shoplifters.

The technology is used to help identify and potentially ban people who are ‘violent, aggressive or steal in the store’.

Sainsbury’s said records would be instantly deleted if the software did not recognise the face of reported individuals.

It added that the system issues an alert based on criminal behaviour submitted by the store or other retailers using Facewatch nearby.

Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said at the time: ‘We have listened to the deep concerns our colleagues and customers have and they’re right to expect us to act.

‘The retail sector is at a crossroads, facing rising abuse, anti-social behaviour and violence. We must put safety first.

‘We understand that facial recognition technology can raise valid questions about data and privacy.

‘This trial and subsequent rollout is not about monitoring colleagues or our valued customers.

‘It’s focused solely on identifying serious offenders who have committed acts of violence, aggression, or theft, helping our teams prevent further harm.’

Joanne Thomas, general secretary of the USDAW union, said: ‘We welcome Sainsbury’s ongoing programme of work to protect retail workers and customers from the continued threat of abuse and violence in stores.

‘We look forward to seeing the results of the trial of facial recognition software and will continue to work closely with Sainsbury’s to support a responsible, evidence-led approach to tackling retail crime.’

Shoplifting figures released last year by the British Retail Consortium showed just 2.5 per cent of offences were recorded by the police annually.

It described 50,000 shoplifting incidents going unreported every day, as BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson said: ‘Many retailers do not see the point of reporting incidents to the police.’ 

Facewatch has defended its role in helping crack down on shoplifters, with chief executive Nick Fisher saying last month: ‘We only store and retain data of known repeat offenders, of which it’s been deemed to be proportionate and responsible to do so.

‘I think in the world that we are currently operating in, as long as the technology is used and managed in a responsible, proportionate way, I can only see it being a force for good.’

The company has also insisted its ‘sharing of images is only of witnessed and evidenced offenders and complies with the principles of data minimisation and proportionality’ and that ‘only individuals reasonably suspected of having committed offences are on the database, not regular shoppers’.

And a Facewatch spokesperson today told the Daily Mail: ‘The conversation around live facial recognition in retail stores is taking place against the backdrop of epidemic levels of theft and rising abuse faced by shop workers across the UK.’

He revealed that 14,885 alerts – more than 2,000 per day – were sent out in the week leading up to Christmas Day, 3,000 more than the previous highest weekly total.

And there were 54,312 across December, a monthly record.

The spokesperson said: ‘Facewatch alerts retailers when a known repeat offender enters their store, sending notifications to mobile devices monitored by trained shop staff.

‘At the same time, the alert also triggers an audio signal which flags an offender more widely on the shop floor.

‘An alert is triggered when live facial recognition cameras match a face with a known offender on a database, giving staff precious advance warning of the presence of an offender and time to consider how to respond.

‘Very often, offenders who are familiar with the audio sound will simply leave without any intervention required.

‘While we are aware there are critics of the technology, we believe they are out of step with public opinion and not considering the approximately 3million UK retail employees, which represent 10 per cent of the adult workforce.’

Independent polling by YouGov on behalf of Facewatch last October, speaking to more than 2,000 UK adults, found about 65 per cent support its use by retailers to prevent theft and anti-social behaviour.

The spokesperson added: ‘Our technology works on a match/no match basis with near-100 per cent accuracy and only triggers alerts for repeating offenders, helping to create a proven safer retail environment for both workers and shoppers.

‘If you’ve done nothing wrong, there is nothing to fear because your data is immediately deleted if no match is detected.

‘Accuracy and proportionality are central to how Facewatch operates. The technology is specifically designed to identify repeat offenders – not innocent members of the general public – and is used lawfully by retailers as a crime-prevention tool at a time when police resources are under significant strain.

‘Facewatch believes this targeted, transparent approach reflects both the high expectations of the public and the need to better protect retail operators and retail workers from the growing threat of theft, abuse and violence.

‘Our research clearly shows the public is behind sensible, privacy-respecting technology that stops the offenders who cause the most harm and protects those on the frontline. With retail crime at its highest ever levels, that protection has never mattered more.’

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: ‘We have been trialling facial recognition technology as the latest in a line of investments we have made to make our stores safe places to work and shop.

‘Incidents of antisocial behaviour, aggression and theft continue to rise and this cannot become our new normal.

‘The two‑store trial with Facewatch has been designed with privacy and transparency at its core, with multiple safeguards and any matches flagged by the system, which has a 99.98 per cent accuracy rate, are reviewed by carefully trained colleagues.

‘The technology only identifies known offenders involved in violence, aggression or theft, and all other data is deleted instantly.’

The Daily Mail has approached the other retail firms mentioned for comment.