This One Simple AI Trick Will Stop Sushi Terrorism

There has been an outbreak of sushi terrorism in Japan! There are over 20,000 Japanese sushi restaurants built around a conveyor belt. You grab what you want as it goes by. Usually, each tier of item has a different colored plate or coded sanitary cover and you get charged at the end of the meal by the number of plates/covers you have. The conveyor belt sushi system has been very popular for many years until the terrorism started.

The wave of terror started in February with a single video of a TikTok prankster licking his finger and touching some sushi as it went by on the conveyor belt. This video has over one hundred million views now and has inspired a number of copycat videos. There are even two dedicated hashtags now #sushiterrorism and #sushitero.

The trend has lead to a national crisis including pranksters licking soy sauce containers, sipping from empty teacups before replacing them with the clean cups, and smearing wasabi on dishes going by. In the very formal culture of Japan this is causing chaos. The largest conveyor belt restaurant chain Sushiro, with over 5,000 outlets, saw their stock slide 5% when the videos surfaced in February. The two other leading chains, Kura Sushi and Hamazushi, are also reporting lower sales since the reign of tuna terror began.

Kura Sushi is using AI powered cameras to fight back. The algorithm is simple, an employee is notified if any dishes are touched without being grabbed, if the sanitary cover is disturbed, or if dishes are returned to the conveyor. Kura also plans to test if computer vision can recognize unusual patterns, like licking a soy sauce container.

Kura is ahead of the pack because they already use table mounted smart cameras and touch screens to automate billing; being ahead in digital transformation gave them a clear advantage here. Kura only needed to teach the cameras to recognize the prank behavior. Other chains are introducing cameras, secure sanitary lids, and sushi security guards!

Kura's AI rollout will be done this month so we'll know soon if AI can effectively fight sushi terrorism. In the meantime, the sushi industry is watching closely.

#ai #computervision #digitaltransformation #sushi #terrorism

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