Sainsbury's pauses facial recognition at East Dulwich store after wrongful shoplifter alert

Sainsbury's has suspended its use of live facial recognition technology at its East Dulwich store after a customer was wrongly identified as a shoplifter. Matt Arnold, 46, a comedy promoter, was stopped by staff on 6 August while purchasing items at a self-service till. He was told he could not be served due to an alleged incident earlier in the week.

Arnold told BBC London that two managers approached him and said he had been flagged by the store’s AI system. He was escorted off the premises and saw a CCTV monitor displaying his face circled in red. The next day, Sainsbury's head office apologised for the incident.

Human error blamed, not the technology

A Sainsbury's spokesperson told the BBC that the technology had been paused at the Dulwich store while an investigation takes place. They attributed the error to human review, not the facial recognition system itself. The supermarket stated that the Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and that every match is checked by a trained manager.

Arnold said he was frustrated by the incident. "A shoplifter does not walk around with that much shopping, they don’t scan it through, they don’t put their Nectar card through," he told the BBC. "What upset me was thinking this is what the future could be, people just listen to what the machine tells them to do without thinking about the consequences."

Second incident in London this year

This is not the first time Sainsbury's facial recognition software has wrongly identified a customer. In January 2026, Warren Rajah, a data strategist from Elephant and Castle, was asked to leave a store after being mistaken for another person in the system. Staff pointed to a sign indicating the use of facial recognition technology when he asked for an explanation.

Rajah told the Press Association that the experience left him feeling like a criminal. "You feel horrible, you feel like a criminal and you don’t even understand why," he said. "To tell you to leave the store without any explanation gives you the impression that you’ve done something wrong."

After contacting Facewatch, Rajah was informed he was not on its database. Sainsbury's later apologised and gave him a £75 shopping voucher. The supermarket said there was no fault with the Facewatch technology, which is used in seven of its stores.

What happens next

Sainsbury's has not specified when the investigation into the East Dulwich incident will conclude or whether the technology will be reinstated. The supermarket has not disclosed which other London stores use the system. Residents concerned about facial recognition in local shops can contact Sainsbury's customer services or Facewatch directly for information.