It emerged on Sunday that Tesco is planning to install the system in all 450 of its petrol stations. The software can analyse images and distinguish men from women and segment them by age, raising privacy fears among some who think it could be used to monitor people's movements.
Privacy campaigners voiced their concern at the news, saying that the explosion in personal data collection was threatening to spiral out of control.
Tesco media relations manager, Emma Capon responded to the fears, saying that "no image or picture of customers is recorded or captured and nor is any personal data captured".
Ke Quang, chief operating officer of Quividi, the Paris-based company that developed the software, insisted the system did not retain information about faces it identifies and so cannot track people's movements.
"We don't do facial recognition, we do face detection," Quang told UK newspaper The Guardian on Monday.
"It's software which works from the video feed coming off the camera. It can detect if it's seeing a face, but it never records the image or biomorphological information or traits. It picks up if it's seeing a man or a woman, the amount of time they pay attention to the screen, and their presence in front of the screen. The key thing though is that it never records or remembers any information. If you go from one camera in one location to another, it can't tell."
The advertising system in question uses the information about the number, age and gender of the people who are in viewing range of the screen, is able to alter the adverts that it shows depending on who is there. Advertisers can use the information to screen adverts in locations and at times of day that will be most effective at reaching their target audience.
