Facial Recognition Misidentification at New World Westend in New Zealand

On April 2, 2024, Te Ani Solomon, a Māori woman, was shopping at New World Westend supermarket in Rotorua, New Zealand, which was participating in a six-month trial of facial recognition technology across 25 Foodstuffs North Island stores. The facial recognition system scans customers' faces and compares them to databases of known offenders or suspects. Two male staff members approached Solomon in the meat section and told her she had been trespassed and needed to leave. Despite Solomon providing three forms of photo identification and insisting they had the wrong person, the staff continued to question her identity for about 10 minutes. Solomon saw an image on their phone of a Māori woman wearing a cap and told them it was not her. She felt the incident was racially motivated and said 'just because I'm black and wear a cap you twats have decided that's me.' The confrontation occurred on her 47th birthday and left her feeling humiliated and distressed. Foodstuffs acknowledged it was a 'genuine case of human error' and apologized. The Privacy Commissioner has expressed concerns about bias and accuracy in facial recognition technology, noting that false matches are more likely for people of colour, particularly women of colour. The software was not trained on New Zealand's population, raising additional concerns about its effectiveness for Māori and Pasifika individuals.