Startup Idea: AI Theft Detection for Cell Phone Stores

Startup idea to develop AI software that analyzes images to identify potential thieves in cell phone stores. The software would use machine learning to find visual patterns in previous known thieves, focusing on non-racial attributes such as dress and body language.

Cell Phone Sales. I work at a Metro PCS store and our main job is in selling two things, 1) Cell phones and 2) cell phone plans. One of the biggest challenges as someone who runs a busy store, is finding who are those who are going to purchase cell phones, and who are potential thiefs. One of our biggest problems is theft, as we are located in Detroit in a high crime area. If we could find a way to figure out who potential thieves are, then we would be able to watch them and catch them when they grab the phones to run.

A software we could use would be one that analyzed thousands of images of known thiefs and then found similarities in appearance, and then would be able to predict who the thieves were or who had a high likelihood of being a thief based on appearance. This would not be racial, as the store customers are mostly mono-racial African Americans, it would be looking at non-racial characteristics such as dress and body language.