I don’t remember Amazon claiming “near-full automation” by AI. They said that you can checkout automatically and that AI/computer vision is somehow involved.

If they didn't say it they heavily implied it to the point that journalists were fooled. For example you can read about it in this very quaint 2018 article that went with a woke "it's your fault I'm disfunctionally paranoid" angle: https://www.cnet.com/culture/amazon-go-avoid-discrimination-....

    No one cared what I was doing. Is this what it feels like to shop when you're not black?