Woolworths has been running a trial of facial recognition technology at its New Zealand office, as the supermarket giant explores using it in its Australian stores. <\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Woolworths told 1News the technology had been tested at its support office in Auckland to “further understand the use of this technology to improve safety”. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile our current safety initiatives are making a difference, we are still seeing a concerning number of incidents of aggression and conflict in our stores on a daily basis, including weapons being presented.” <\/p>\n
They said that between 2019 and 2025, acts of violence and aggression had increased by 238%.<\/p>\n
“We have also seen a shift from opportunistic shoplifting to more brazen confrontations often involving weapons, threats to kill, and physical violence.”<\/p>\n
They said the corporation was “still at an early stage” and could not comment further. <\/p>\n
The test comes after a February ruling by Australia’s Privacy Commissioner that gave hardware giant Bunnings the green light to use facial recognition, following a previous ruling that found it had breached privacy laws. <\/p>\n
Facial recognition technology is already being used in New Zealand. <\/p>\n
Bunnings has rolled it out<\/a> across its network, while Foodstuffs, which operates New World, Pak’n’Save, and Four Square, has also implemented it at some locations<\/a>. <\/p>\n Briscoes Group, which is behind Briscoes and Rebel Sport, has been running a year-long trial of the technology at its stores. <\/p>\n Before using facial recognition technology, the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner said organisations must justify its necessity, ensure the problem is serious, and check whether less intrusive alternatives would work.<\/p>\n The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump\u2019s new threat to the Middle East, and Kiwis behaving badly. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woolworths has been running a trial of facial recognition technology at its New Zealand office, as the supermarket…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,138,67,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-572167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572167\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}