By Emilia David , a reporter who covers AI. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.

Amazon’s Project PI AI looks for product defects before they ship

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2024-06-05 01:30:04

By Emilia David , a reporter who covers AI. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.

Amazon’s Project PI, or “Private Investigator,” setup combines generative AI and computer vision to “see” damage on products or determine if they are the wrong color or size before the item gets sent to customers.

The way it works is that products on their way to customers go through a tunnel that scans the items. The computer vision program — a type of AI that looks at images and understands what’s in them — checks to see if there is damage. If it finds something, that item is isolated, while the system evaluates the defect and determines if there’s an issue with similar items to track down the root cause.

According to Amazon, Project PI is active in “several” North American warehouses and will be added to more sites throughout the year. Last year, Amazon rolled out a different system that flags frequently returned items to highlight items that tend to have issues before customers actually hit the order button. This all highlights how avoiding a potentially “nightmarish” return process is good for customers, Amazon, and the environment in terms of reducing carbon emissions.