Tesco under fire for ‘creepy’ plan to scan customers’ faces

The retailer will introduce the OptimEyes screen, developed by Lord Sugar’s Amscreen, to all 450 of its UK petrol stations in a five-year deal, it has been reported.

The screen, positioned at the till, scans customers’ eyes to determine their age and gender before displaying adverts tailored to suit them and monitoring their purchases.

National privacy group NO2ID’s campaign manager James Baker, who lives in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, said it was like something out of sci-fi film Minority Report.

“A lot of customers will find it a bit creepy and intrusive,” he said.

“Our concern is that they will be scanning people’s faces without their permission and judging their behaviour.

“The other point is how quickly this surveillance technology is advancing and how much our behaviour is under observation.”

Retailers already collect data about shoppers’ buying habits through loyalty card schemes, but the latest advance is a “step too far”, Mr Baker said.

“You can choose not to have a loyalty card but you don’t have any choice about this,” he said.

Professor John Robinson, of the University of York’s department of electronics, which develops similar facial recognition technology, said he expected to see more and more retailers adopt it to target their advertising and monitor footfall throughout their stores.

“Capturing dwell time of customers at certain displays is something companies already do with cameras,” he said.

“This can tell them what sort of person is lingering.

“I think there will be more of it and I think there are other applications we are likely to see it in, probably security where not just age and gender but ethnicity and maybe facial expressions and other things like that are collected.”

He added: “There are certainly ethical issues but I think automatically deciding if someone is male or female isn’t really at the heart of those.”

The screens, which also adjust adverts depending on the time and date, are predicted to reach a weekly audience of more than five million adults.

Amscreen chief executive Simon Sugar said they could “change the face of British retail” and there were plans to roll them out to as many supermarkets as possible.

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