Facewatch’s facial-recognition system wrongly flagged a customer as a shoplifter at a Sainsbury’s store in south London, after which staff told him he could not be served over an ‘earlier incident’ and escorted him from the premises despite his having already paid. Facewatch said its system generated a correct alert but that store staff mishandled how it was communicated, while Sainsbury’s attributed the incident to human error and apologized the next day. It was one of several wrongful facial-recognition matches reported at UK retailers even as the chain continues rolling the technology out to roughly 200 stores in 2026.