Stepping Into an Amazon Store Helps It Get Inside Your Head

Infrared light flooded down invisibly as I eyed the pastries in Amazon's new convenience store in downtown San Francisco. It helped cameras mounted on the store's ceiling detect that I picked up a croissant, then put it back. My flirtation with a $3.19 morsel of flaky pastry was recorded during a preview of the Amazon Go store that opened in San Francisco's financial district this morning. As in the five other such stores in Seattle and Chicago, shoppers gain entry by scanning a QR code in the Amazon Go mobile app to open a subway-style entry gate. Hundreds of cameras on the ceiling, plus sensors in the shelves, then record what each person picks up, so they can walk out without having to visit a checkout.