Rite Aid banned from use of facial recognition in stores after thousands of false matches

The ban will last five years, the Federal Trade Commission said.

Drugstore chain Rite Aid has accepted a ban of its use of facial recognition software for five years due to false accusations stemming from the technology that disproportionately affected people of color, the Federal Trade Commission said.

The retailer failed to impose reasonable precautions in its deployment of facial recognition, resulting in thousands of false-positive matches with customers accused of shoplifting and other inappropriate behavior, a legal complaint from the FTC said.

Acting on false-positive alerts, employees followed consumers around its stores, searched them, accused them of wrongdoing in front of friends and family, and called the police to remove them, the complaint said.

The company also chose not to inform customers of its use of facial recognition and discouraged employees from doing so, the FTC said.