Pick & Go’s technology provider, Intellify, is in talks with other retailers to provide artificial intelligence (AI) concierge services and unmanned retail solutions that it has used in Pick & Go’s four AI stores here.
Unstaffed outlets here are largely located on student campuses and in high-tech retail hubs like Esplanade Xchange.
Chateraise’s outlet, which brings in roughly 100 customers each month, aims to place the brand’s stores closer to residential areas, said its spokesman, who added that there are plans to set up more AI outlets.
Retailers have long chased such systems as an answer to labour shortages, especially in developed countries, experts said. In recent months, however, some major players are rethinking their approach.
In April 2024, Amazon ditched its similar Just Walk Out systems, which had been deployed at its outlets in the United States since 2018, and turned to self-checkout systems.
The tech likewise used sensors to track what shoppers took, but the company was also said to have relied on an army of over 1,000 workers in India, who were manually reviewing transactions and labelling images from videos to train the system’s AI model.
The company has since refuted these claims, stating that a team of associates helps to train the AI system by labelling and annotating real shopping data, and not by watching live videos of shoppers to generate receipts.
In China, a rush to open unmanned stores in the 2010s has petered out. There were an estimated 200 automated convenience stores around the country in 2017, but many started to shutter in the years that followed.
Operators were unconvinced by the promises of the tech, which reports by Nikkei Asia said fell short due to a lack of data analysis to ensure items are sold optimally, and a lack of fresh groceries in the shops’ selection. Fresh items, the publication wrote, are key to bringing in more footfall and higher profit margins.
