Will AI shoplifting detection replace LP managers?

Yes, that’s right. Something else to worry about.

AI cameras can now trigger alerts when someone covertly takes something off your shelves. If you didn’t know that, well… now you do. Happy to show you a demo. Anyway, enough sales talk — back to job security.

If a camera can watch every aisle, 24/7, and automatically flag suspicious behaviour… it sounds like the investigation work disappears. But I think the opposite is about to happen. AI doesn’t remove the work — it creates far more starting points.

Instead of LP teams waiting for a vigilant staff member to notice an empty clothes hanger, the system is constantly raising its hand saying: “Have a look at this.” Some of those alerts will be noise. Some will be nothing. But some will be real. And none of them required two hours scrubbing through footage just to find the moment.

Then something interesting starts to happen. When those signals appear across stores, across weeks, across incidents… LP suddenly has visibility it never had before. The conversation stops being “Shrink went down 1%, we think we did well” and starts becoming: where theft is happening, who is doing it, whether it’s internal or external, which stores have patterns, who the repeat targets are, and what we do about it next week.

AI might watch the footage. But someone still has to understand what it means.

My guess? AI doesn’t replace Loss Prevention. It finally gives it the data to prove its value.

Now I’ve just written a post saying your job is safe from AI… someone please return the favour and tell me mine is 😬