Critics cite potential for employee harassment
Supermarket chain AEON has deployed an artificial intelligence system across its stores in Japan to rate a shop assistant's service attitude, according to reports.
The AI system, named Mr. Smile, evaluates and standardises employees' smiles to accurately rate a shop assistant's service attitude.
The system uses more than 450 elements, including facial expressions, voice volume, and tone of greetings, the South China Morning Post reported.
AEON rolled out the system this month across 240 shops in Japan after a successful trial in eight stores with about 3,400 employees.
The trial found that service attitude went up by up to 1.6 times in three months, the SCMP reported.
Despite the gains from this new tool, criticisms are mounting against Mr. Smile over potential employee harassment. UA Zensen, Japan's largest union, recently carried out a survey among almost 30,000 employees in the service industry and other sectors on customer harassment experience.
One respondent said that when service industry workers are "forced to smile according to a 'standard,' it looks to me like another form of customer harassment."
Another respondent said using a machine to "standardise" people's attitude sounds "cold and silly," the SCMP reported.
Organisations across Japan have long been urged by authorities to protect their employees' wellbeing amid cases of customer harassment.
Last month, UA Zensen also urged employers to come up with a manual of instructions to address the harassment of workers by customers, The Japan Times reported.
It also asked the Japanese government to pass law that would mandate employers to address customer harassment, stressing its impact on employees' mental health.
