Retail goods worth 3.5 million pounds stolen every day

In the past, retail theft used to be associated with riots and episodes of social unrest. Essentially, when such violent incidents occur, law enforcement agencies are stretched, and the rogue crowd takes advantage of the lax security at retail stores. However, theft data coming through over the past couple of years point to a very worrying trend – shoplifting has become more broad-based and casual.

Across the UK, stores are reporting theft daily – goods amounting to over 3.5 million pounds get stolen every single day across the UK (see news).

Contributing factors – cost of living and light police presence

A study on retail theft by the Centre for Retail Research revealed two main contributing factors for the steep rise in shoplifting – rise in cost of living and inadequate police presence which could serve as a deterrent and prevent shoplifting. Shoppers visit stores, fill their bags and leave the stores without paying – emboldened by the fact that they wouldn’t get caught by security personnel or even the police.

Quite a few retailers, who did not treat this seriously in the past, have now come around to recognize that this is a problem that needs to be addressed with urgency.

Retail stores take additional security measures

Retailers cannot trust anyone anymore and they have started rolling out additional security measures. For instance, shops have started using security tags, security boxes, and various shelving solutions to reduce theft. Stores in a few locations that saw increased crime rates have enhanced their physical security by installing gates and barriers, especially at the counters to protect store staff. Despite these measures, shoplifting has been steadily rising and has crossed 1 billion pounds last year.

An AI makeover for traditional CCTV surveillance

Ever since artificial intelligence (AI) applications started becoming popular, there have been growing interest in the various domains and industry verticals that could take advantage of its benefits. While retail stores have invested heavily into deploying CCTV surveillance, the technology has mainly served as a deterrent. While CCTV evidence is helpful in carrying out historical analysis of a crime, it can do very little to make real-time interventions such as detecting and preventing crime.

SAI Group’s innovative visual AI solution transforms CCTV surveillance from a reactive mode to a more proactive one. The visual AI solution works with existing CCTV camera infrastructure in retail stores, detects suspicious customer behaviour at the shopping aisles, tills, and self-checkout counters and sends alerts to the handheld terminals of the store’s employees.

Rising popularity of visual AI among retail chains

For long, retails chains in the UK and west have been at the receiving end of retail crime. In addition to suffering financial losses, the retail chains are deeply concerned about the safety of their store staff as retail crime is growing at a faster rate with each passing year.

During the last quarter of 2024, in the run up to the annual holiday and shopping season, three of the top 5 retail chains in the UK started rolling out SAI Group’s visual AI in hundreds of their stores across the UK.

Easy to deploy, cost-effective AI

One of the biggest challenges that AI solution providers face today is to make their solutions cost-effective. Whether it is a fixed cost or a per-seat subscription, AI solutions need to ensure that:

• They cover their costs in terms of the computing resources that they consume
• Their customers do not find it difficult to justify the costs incurred while implementing AI solutions.

SAI Group offers highly competitive solutions that ensure return on investment within a few months of deployment.

About SAI

As a leader in computer vision technology, SAI Group delivers cutting-edge, multi-modal AI solutions into retail environments. Using a unique platform approach, its technology uses existing camera systems to target losses, increase store safety, and underpin operational efficiencies.

All solutions are built from the ground up to ensure the highest levels of security and data protection, respecting the privacy expectations of the public and operating to stringent ethical standards while delivering substantial value to our clients. Globally, SAI monitors millions of transactions per day, protecting the revenues from tens of millions of product sales and hundreds of millions of customer interactions. Its models also accurately identify anti-social behaviour, aggression and violence, helping to de-escalate situations with real-time interfaces to security officers and operations centres.