month and is aiming to be in 100000 stores across japan in three years it has 50 million yen 450000 in funding from softbank group corps ai fund and is in the middle of its series a round seeking to raise 1 billion yenwhat makes aibased shoplifting detection a straightforward proposition is the fact that most of the hardware security cameras is usually already in placeessentially this is using something thats been underutilised for decades said vera merkatz business development manager at third eye founded in 2016 the startup offers services similar to vaak in the uk market where it has a deal with a major grocery chain third eye is looking to expand into europethe ability to detect and analyse unusual human behaviour also has other applications vaak is developing a videobased selfcheckout system and wants to use the videos to collect information on how consumers interact with items in the store to help shops display products more effectively beyond retail tanaka envisions using the video software in public spaces and train platforms to detect suspicious behaviour or suicide jumpers at third eye merkatz said shes been approached by security management companies looking to leverage their ai technologythe potential is broad since it can be applied outside of shoplifting prevention and outside of retail such as with manufacturing or other types of marketing said hiroaki ando a retail consultant at ernst young advisory consulting co in tokyo bloomberg published on mar 6 2019 at 1145 am ist telegram facebook copy link be the first one to comment comment now comments comment now read comment 1 all comments post post find this comment offensive choose your reason below and click on the submit button this will alert our moderators to take actions reasons for reporting foul language defamatory inciting hatred against a certain community out of context spam others report join the community of 2m industry professionals subscribe to our newsletter to get latest insights analysis download etretail app get realtime updates save your favourite articles scan to download app vaak shoplifter retail ai amazoncom third eye ernst young advisory consulting co homenewsindustrythe ai cameras that can spot shoplifters even before they steal