Walmart Patents Sound Sensors

Walmart Inc. has received a patent for audio sensors that the mega-retailer’s filing noted would record the sounds of shopping and checkout, including the conversations of employees and shoppers, giving rise to privacy concerns, according to published reports.

“We’ve made it perfectly clear in the patent that all sounds will be picked up, including voice,” Ragan Dickens, Walmart’s director of corporate communications, told CBS News, adding that the Bentonville, Ark.-based company has “also made clear the intent” of the technology, which it maintained would be used to collect data to establish a “performance metric” for workers.

That is, the sensors would record the number of items scanned, the number of bags used, the length of shoppers’ wait time, and how employees interacted with customers.

According to Walmart’s patent filing, the audio system would help lower costs and enhance the shopping experience while also checking that associates were performing “efficiently and correctly.”

Dickens said that the audio would be reviewed mainly by computers, and that the program wouldn’t be “analyzing the words” recorded, but the filing raised the possibility that performance could be “based on the content of the conversation,” such as whether workers adhered to a “specific greeting” or “script.”

The program may also be illegal in states with two-party consent laws, which ban recording people without their consent. Twelve states currently have versions of such laws.

“This is a very bad idea,” Sam Lester, consumer privacy counsel of the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, stressed to CBS News. “If they do decide to implement this technology, the first thing we would want and expect is to know which privacy expectations are in place.”

For the present, however, any program deploying the sensors is just an idea, according to Walmart.

“We file patents frequently, but that doesn’t mean the patents will actually be implemented,” the company clarified in a statement. “We’re always thinking about new concepts and ways that will help us further enhance how we serve customers.”

Dickens further assured CBS News that Walmart associates would be made aware of the sensors before installation, and that “if the concept became a reality, we would comply with state and local laws.”

Walmart came in first in Progressive Grocer's 2018 Super 50 ranking of top grocers in the United states.