By Devindra Hardawar / Source: Engadget

It looks like those rumors of Amazon convenience stores were true. The online shopping giant unveiled Amazon Go today, its spin on brick and mortar retail. It uses computer vision, a whole bunch of sensors and deep learning to let you walk into a store, sign in with an Amazon Go app, fill up your bags and leave without stopping for a checkout line. Amazon is calling it a “Just Walk Out Shopping” experience, a self-descriptive name if there ever was one. The company is starting out with a large store in Seattle, but it’s clearly meant to serve as a model for other locations and retail stores.

For now, the Amazon Go store is only open to the company’s employees, but you can sign up to be alerted when it’s available to all. In many ways, it’s exactly how I would imagine Amazon’s approach to physical retail: incredibly convenient and potentially disruptive. While the company’s technology looks like it can effectively tell when you add and remove items from your “cart,” I’m more curious about how it would prevent people without the Amazon Go from entering the store. And potentially even more damning, what would a store like this mean for retail jobs?

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