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Artificial intelligence (AI) is now part of everyday life in the modern world, even if we don't always know when and where.
While AI platforms like ChatGPT, Siri and Alexa are among the most well-known, major Australian retailers like Woolworths and Bunnings are also using AI, in the form of software called Auror.
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Auror chief executive Phil Thomson says the software is used to catch shoplifters.
"There are different tools that a retailer can choose to use," he says.
"So, with an image, once that's uploaded into the platform, that can then be referenced across crimes reported today, to see if it's the same person who's committed those other offences."
Mr Thomson says the AI is powerful enough to spot crime and send alerts to security staff in real-time — but only if it detects wrongdoing.
"For a general customer, they would have no interaction with Auror at all, so they wouldn't be impacted by it," he says.
Retailers gathering information via AI
Retailers have been experimenting with AI and facial recognition for a few years.
Bunnings and Kmart are currently being investigated by Australia's privacy watchdog for their use of another facial recognition software application.
But Mr Thompson says Auror works differently.
"We're not doing live facial recognition; it doesn't reference any parts of the internet at all," he says.
"This is just the information that's already been captured for a crime event that's happened in a store."
But emerging technologies expert Nicholas Davis, from the University of Technology Sydney, says retailers' use of AI could still be of concern, due to a lag in privacy laws.
"We don't have some of the nuance or the specifics about particularly sensitive types of data or combinations of data — like your license plate, plus what you've bought at the supermarket, plus which aisle you visited," Professor Davis says.
"The combinations of those things can be really important to someone. And yet retailers are using that kind of information all the time for different purposes, particularly for marketing.
"Retailers that are tracking you in store, when that reveals who you are or other aspects of you and then is shared outside that organisation — that can be a breach of the Privacy Act."
Ultimately, the onus of privacy is on retailers rather than a software company.
"We're probably about 20 years behind where Europe and other countries are in terms of the rights that we have as consumers with regard to our private information," Professor Davis says.
Law enforcement buys in
Organised retail crime, as well as petty shoplifting, is thought to be worth millions of dollars a day.
Criminal gangs often work across multiple retailers to steal certain items for resale.
In theory, Coles and Woolworths could use Auror to work together to catch a group of shoplifters, using the AI across a bigger data set.
"This information that's being captured by retailers isn't new, but they're just making it much easier to identify the repeat people who are targeting them," Mr Thomson says.
Auror says it works with police around the country to help retailers provide evidence to investigators.
In 2020, the Australian Federal Police admitted that staff had trialled the controversial software Clearview AI, which "scrapes" images of people from social media and other parts of the internet.
The privacy commissioner later found the AFP had failed to comply with its privacy obligations in using the tool, and the US company had breached Australians' privacy.
But the ACT's Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan says Auror is used in a different way.
"It basically is a substitute for what we would normally do in relation to going to a business and collecting the CCTV," he says.
"We're not using the AI or facial recognition capability, it's basically read-only for us."
It may save some legwork, but Deputy Commissioner Gaughan says it doesn't eliminate old-fashioned police work.
"It'd be very, very unusual for someone to go on a spree of shoplifting that isn't known to my officers," he says.
"The [Auror] vision has a photograph of someone who's allegedly committed a crime.
"Our officers then use their local knowledge and expertise to determine who that person is."
NSW Police says it uses Auror in a similar way.
"NSWPF has access to the Auror system and uses it for collecting intelligence relating to retail crime", it said in a statement.
While police may currently be on the receiving end of an AI product, Deputy Commission Gaughan says that is likely to change.
"The ability to use facial recognition to identify people involved in a serious crime no doubt will happen.
"When we first started using DNA, many people thought that was the end of the world as we knew it.
"Now the courts accept it when it's done properly."