Microsoft wants to take shopping into the high-tech, slightly dystopian future by deploying facial recognition cameras in retail locations to create a highly personalized, in-store experience.
In a blog post this week titled “2015: The Year of On-demand, Personalized Shopping” spotted by Mashable, the Xbox maker discusses plans to install versions of its Kinect camera in brick-and-mortar stores to watch which items customers pick up most often, follow their path throughout a store and even recognize their faces to provide a thorough shopping history and helpful tips.
“With the help of a Kinect sensor, AVAretail’s SmartShelf technology allows every interaction of a shelf in a store to be monitored and recorded in real-time, providing insight into which products are most selected and picked up by customers,” Microsoft wrote in the post. “The NEC Biometric interface with Kinect Camera system provides demographic and face recognition services to a Kinect enabled application. Retailers can use this information for analysis and for providing the customer with a more personal selling experience.”
The technologies described by Microsoft have undergone design with the goal of providing “a personal and relevant shopping experience” to customers by collating their personal information to return “context sensitive ads and promotions.” The data and technologies described could potentially be used for a number of future innovations.
Microsoft has already partnered with GamseStop, Hardee’s and TGI Fridays to set up Microsoft Cloud and Windows 8-enabled devices for faster product browsing and selection in physical store locations later this year.
The company’s vision of a personalized data-based digital experience in stores calls to mind a similar future scenario imagined in the 2002 film “Minority Report,” where citizens undergo facial scans everywhere they set foot for selective advertising and scarier “security.”
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