Sam's Club is going register-free and introducing an all-digital, AI-powered shopping experience for its customers, a move that has privacy advocates worried that the new AI tool could be used to unfairly target some customers with higher-priced items based on their shopping habits. The all-digital approach started with the reconstruction of a Sam's Club in Grapevine, a suburb of Dallas, that was severely damaged in 2022 by a tornado. When the retail location opened two years later it was the first of its kind to ditch its registers for a "Scan and Go" program that allowed customers to scan each item placed in their physical cart and pay through a mobile app. This program has since been piloted in nine Dallas metro locations and one store in Missouri, Retail Dive reported. Instead of handing a receipt to a Sam's Club employee to review before leaving the store, customers walk through an arch that's equipped with AI-powered cameras to capture images of the items in the cart and electronically match them with the items paid for through the app. Sam's Club did not disclose when the AI technology would be coming to California stores but Sam's Club has outlets in Torrance, Fountain Valley, El Monte and Riverside.

Pornhub has been on damage control ever since a New York Times report published in December accused it of allowing the monetization of child exploitation, revenge porn and other illegal content with its lax policy enforcement. Now, the website has expounded upon the steps it has taken since then, including getting the services of a third-party firm called Yoti to verify the identities of users uploading content. Shortly after the NYT piece went out, Pornhub banned all uploads from unverified users and prevented people from downloading videos. It then removed millions of videos from its platform, all uploaded by unverified users and non-content partners. The website, and all the properties owned by its parent company MindGeek, now only accepts uploads by members of its Model Program, namely studio partners and verified users.

INSURANCE is an industry that hasn't really transformed for a very long time. We still buy the same kind of policies from the same types of companies through the same channels. Unlike the banking and financial services space, insurance hasn't been disrupted enough. But that's about to change. According to a new study by GlobalData, Artificial intelligence (AI) provides unprecedented opportunities for the insurance industry, and the changes it can bring about will transform insurers forever.