Amazon just unveiled a grocery store without lines or checkout counters. Amazon Go, a 1800-square-foot retail space located in the company’s hometown of Seattle, lets shoppers just grab the items they want and leave; the order gets charged to their Amazon account afterwards. 
 
 Amazon Go works by using computer vision and sensors to detect what items you’re taking out of the store. You start by scanning an app as you enter the Amazon Go shop. You do your normal shopping, and the sensors throughout the store identify the items in your cart and charge them to your account when you walk out the door. It’ll feel like shoplifting, except you’re actually being watched by more cameras than you can imagine. 
 
 The shop will stock most items you’d find in a local convenience store: snacks, drinks, premade food like salads and sandwiches, and grocery essentials like bread and milk. It’ll also sell Blue Apron-like meal kits that let you cook your own dinners for two. 
 
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 On the consumer level, the benefits are obvious — no waiting in line or fussing around with self-checking machines. But for Amazon, the company could potentially track you and your phone as you browse the store to track items you buy. By looking at your movements in the store as you shop, Amazon could analyze items you may have noticed or were potentially interested in buying (i.e., picking something up off a shelf and putting it back down.) Combine this with your Amazon.com browsing activities and the company could gear up to serve even more recommended products wherever you’re online. 
 
 Though Amazon Go does do away with human cashiers, we haven’t seen anything about robots physically stocking the store, so while it does eliminate some jobs, it’s not a completely automated system... at least, not yet. 
 
 The store is currently open in beta to Amazon employees only. A public opening is scheduled for early 2017. 

 It's not quite Minority Report's eyeball-scanning Gap store, but it's pretty close. On Monday, Amazon announced Amazon Go, the tech company's latest disruption of the retail industry -- a grocery store where consumers can swipe the retailer's app, take what they want to buy from shelves, and walk out without any traditional check-outs, registers or lines. 
 
 "Four years ago, we started to wonder, what would shopping look like if you could walk into a store, grab what you want, and just go," said a voiceover in a two-minute introductory video available on Amazon's site that compares the technology of the program to that of self-driving cars. "No lines, no check-out, no registers. Welcome to Amazon Go." 
 
 Now in beta mode with Amazon employees, the 1,800-square-foot store, selling ready-made meals and grocery staples, should open to the public next year. It is located in Seattle, where the 22-year-old brand is headquartered.
– Generally, walking into a grocery store, grabbing what you want, and walking out without checking out is a little thing polite society likes to call "shoplifting," but Amazon has eliminated the checkout line without introducing the criminality via Amazon Go, a brick-and-mortar store currently in beta. The lowdown: How it works: You walk in, scan the Amazon Go app on your phone, you grab what you want, and you walk out. Big Brother tallies your purchases, charges your Amazon account, and emails you a receipt. What's in it for you: Convenience. Yes, Bezos and Co. have felt the panic of those among us who desperately scan the checkout lines for the shortest one. What's in it for Amazon: Another chit toward world domination. But more interestingly/importantly, Amazon Go provides another, deeper window into your soul, dear consumer. As the Verge notes, "By looking at your movements in the store as you shop, Amazon could analyze items you may have noticed or were potentially interested in buying (i.e., picking something up off a shelf and putting it back down.)" Take me there now: The store is in beta in Seattle for Amazon employees only; it'll open to the general public early next year. For the rest of us, "the technology is something a traditional grocer would never be able to fund themselves," an expert tells AdAge. "This is Amazon taking advantage of their other R&D programs, their willingness to experiment at scale." In short, wait a decade before you expect to see the same concept on a corner near you.