Yeah. I've heard of a similar, albeit more primitive, concept called "self-checkout lane" - that never took off, either.
I'm assuming that was sarcastic. If not, the rest of this doesn't make as much sense.
Self checkout lanes still typically have a person at the end monitoring a few lanes, and some scales you have to put everything on after you scan it.
As I understand, these still require a random audit, which isn't too hard to defeat still. For one, it's unlikely to require audits close together, so just keep an eye on things and then jump on the line that just had an audit.
Assuming the audit system is actually random, there's no way you can guarantee that two audits won't come up back-to-back either. Are you really willing to take that chance?
Alternately you can bury the thing you want to steal underneath a bunch of other stuff in the cart.
Now you're assuming they haven't been trained to pull items from random depths in the cart, as much of a pain as that might sometimes be.
Avoid a line that has the rare diligent auditor.
Self-checkout lanes where I live tend to be the cashiers that are more observant and reliable than the average cashier. I'd assume with a system like this, they'd tend to be even more so.
Lastly if you get caught just watch the process and as they go to scan a stolen item say something like "Wait, that's not supposed to be in there. I thought I put that back on the shelf."
Yeah, I'm sure he's heard that one before too. The guys manning these stations aren't likely to be that naive.
OTOH, that doesn't make this a show stopper. With higher custom satisfaction (which hopefully translates to a higher repeat sale rate) and reduced total cashier payroll this can still work to a net profit if the additional shrink isn't too severe.
People actually determined to shoplift are still more likely to just stuff the item in their jacket, where the auditor is unlikely to check anyway.