Amazon’s Just Walk Out Expands as NFL Season Kicks Off

Amazon is bringing its checkout-free commerce technology to more schools and stadiums.

This fall, the company’s Just Walk Out technology will be in the most new stores to open at NFL stadiums in a single season, Amazon announced Tuesday (Sept. 3).

In addition, Just Walk Out (JWO) is being added to more college campuses, with more than 30 university stores around the world using the technology, which allows consumers to scan a credit card before entering the store, with Amazon charging them for the items they pick out.

“Last season, NFL game attendance reached a peak of nearly 19 million fans showing up to support their teams, and they don’t want to miss a minute of the action,” Amazon said in a news release. “Long lines for concessions have been a growing complaint of fans who want a speedier and more convenient shopping experience.”

To combat this problem, the company is opening six new JWO locations at Seattle’s Lumen Field: five traditional stores and one enabled with radio-frequency identification (RFID) which allows the “checkout-free experience to expand to clothing, hats, fan gear, and more.”

These new stores bring Lumen’s JWO total to 15, the most of any venue around the world, Amazon added.

As noted here last month, Amazon has recently introduced a new multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) system for JWO, designed to enhance the accuracy and scalability of checkout-free retail environments. Compared to its predecessors, which analyzed shopper actions sequentially, this new AI simultaneously processes data from a variety of sources throughout the store.

“We accomplish this by analyzing data from cameras and sensors throughout the store simultaneously, instead of looking at which items shoppers pick up and put back in a linear sequence,” Amazon said.

The system’s ability to learn and adapt is “particularly noteworthy,” PYMNTS wrote. Trained using a three-dimensional map of the store and a catalog of merchandise images it can understand the placement of fixtures and recognize products.

“This continuous learning capability suggests a future where retail environments become responsive to shopper behaviors,” PYMNTS wrote.

“Multimodal AI is a significant game changer,” Shawn DuBravac, CEO of Avrio Institute, a think tank studying emerging technologies, told PYMNTS. “It will drive advancements across numerous industries, leading to smarter, more adaptive systems that can understand and respond to the world in a more humanlike manner.”