Amazon has announced it will more than double the number of third-party stores using its ‘Just Walk Out’ technology this year.

There are already around 140 third-party locations across the US, UK, Canada and Australia using the technology including at conference centres, hospitals and entertainment venues.

The move comes after Amazon said it was ditching its Just Walk Out tech across all of its Fresh grocery stores in the US.

Amazon also recently closed three of its Just Walk Out stores in the UK following a review. It still has around 15 stores in the UK using the service.

“We have strong conviction that Just Walk Out technology will be the future in stores that have a curated selection where customers can pop in, grab the small number of items they need, and simply walk out,” Amazon said.

Amazon estimates that over 18 million items have been sold in Just Walk Out stores since the technology was introduced.

The online retailer believes the technology will continue to grow as consumers like the convenience of Just Walk Out, while businesses benefit from “increased sales, reduced theft and return on investment”.

When customers are doing larger shops, Amazon said they prefer Amazon Dash Cart, a smart shopping trolly which uses the same computer vision technology as just Walk Out.

Amazon added that it has begun expanding Dash Cart to its Amazon Fresh stores as well as third-party stores.

“Just Walk Out technology, Amazon Dash Cart, and Amazon One are made possible thanks to our AI researchers pushing the boundaries of what is possible with computer vision, specifically item and action recognition, sophisticated low-cost sensors for weight and vision, and deep learning ML models,” Amazon added.

---