The majority of UK shoppers are unhappy with retailer use of AI on the shop floor to curb shoplifting and attacks on staff, new research reveals.
Some 59% of shoppers surveyed by VoCoVo said they were uncomfortable about the use of facial recognition and other AI-based technology to track their presence and activity in stores.
It comes as new data from facial recognition tech provider Facewatch – which counts Sainsbury’s, Iceland, Farmfoods, Home Bargains, B&M, Spar, Southern Co-op and Morrisons Daily among its customers – reveals it sent more than half a million “real-time offender alerts” to retailers in 2025, more than doubling the number issued the previous year.
Each day Facewatch sends an average of 1,415 alerts, compared with 693 per day in 2024, a clear sign of the “industrial scale” of retail crime now facing businesses, its CEO Nick Fisher said.
December saw a record number of alerts sent.
“Retailers are dealing with levels of theft and aggression that would have been unthinkable a few years ago,” Fisher added.
Despite the broadening adoption of such technology, consumers remain uneasy about it.
The VoCoVo study found more than half (52%) of shoppers were uncomfortable specifically with AI-enabled CCTV and body cameras monitoring them for colleague protection, even if the main purpose is to protect teams, with a similar number worried about how retailers retain their personal data and who they share it with.
“It is well understood that retailers and their teams are under real and sustained pressures,” said Beth Worrall, CEO at VoCoVo.
“New and innovative technologies, like AI, are being implemented to release some of the pressure and recalibrate retail operating models. What this research shows is simple: technology must be deployed with a clear human purpose if it is to create sustainable impact and value.”
The use of AI for security is set to ramp up, with a VoCoVo survey of retailers finding a third (34%) had already implemented AI as part of their anti-theft strategy, with almost half (48%) planning to within the next 12 months.
Facewatch said its own consumer study - conducted by YouGov - found two thirds of the people surveyed (65.6 per cent) agreed that shop owners should be allowed to use facial recognition to prevent theft and anti-social behaviour, while seven in ten people (69.5 per cent) agreed facial recognition should be used to protect retail workers from repeat offenders.
The use of facial recognition in stores has proven controversial, with several cases of innocent shoppers being mistakenly accused of being a shoplifter by the systems.
It has sparked opposition from privacy campaign groups such as Big Brother Watch, which last year filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office over Asda’s live facial recognition trial. It argued Asda was “infringing the data rights” of shoppers, and that the FaiceTech system was processing “data with a high degree of risk to data subjects’ rights”.
Several retailers – including Home Bargains and Southern Co-op - have faced legal challenges and regulator scrutiny over their use of such systems.
Of the consumer survey findings, Jasleen Chaggar, legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch, told The Grocer it was “no surprise shoppers object to being treated like a rogues’ gallery when they’ve done nothing to arouse suspicion”.
“For retailers to indiscriminately subject their customers to automated monitoring and profiling – often without their knowledge or consent – is intrusive and unwarranted. When the technology inevitably gets it wrong, innocent members of the public find they are smeared by criminal accusations and left to clear their name,” Chaggar said.
“Retailers should respect the rights of their shoppers over misplaced promises of security, and the government must step in to restrain the growing AI Wild West taking over shops across the country,” she added.
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