Japanese Supermarket AEON Uses AI to Secretly Track Employee Smiles

AEON is the first Japanese company in the world to use AI to find out how workers feel about dealing with customers.

People spend the majority of their time at work or in an office after leaving home. For better efficiency, the atmosphere at work should be nice. On the other hand, we hear a lot about how bad the workplace is in many global companies. Workers are sometimes punished for not meeting goals. Some workers are quit for the smallest of reasons.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being used by the Japanese supermarket chain AEON to rate and standardise its workers’ smiles. This has started a new conversation about harassment in the workplace.

The national brand said on July 1 that it was the first company in the world to push an AI system that measures smiles. It uses this system in all 240 of its stores across the country.

The system looks at more than 450 things, such as body language, voice volume, and the way people meet each other. It was also made with “game” features that encourage staff to improve their attitude by competing with their scores.

AEON said it tested the method in eight stores with a total of 3,400 employees and found that over three months, service attitude got better by up to 1.6 times.