A more charitable reading is that the cameras are at ground level and stay aimed at ground level. I got the impression he's not talking about the main basket of the shopping cart, but the storage right above the wheels where you might forget pet food or bulk paper goods.

okay, that might be my non-native English comprehension. I parsed "bottom of the basket" as the flat underside of the main part of the cart. And you'd have to point the cameras upwards to see that.

If it's horizontal, that's a different topic.

I had the same impression upon first read. And from a programmers perspective of what the ideal conditions for such a software would be, I also thought of a ground placed camera, pointing upwards in a way in which id could see the basket an find items that were "forgotten" in it.

Horizontally aligned, pointing into the space where your cart goes when you check out. Unless we’re worried about blurry pix of well-turned ankles showing up on the web, I don’t think there’s cause for concern.

Until the first horny teen working a station gets an idea into their head.

The cashier can’t see the camera. The camera is watched by object recognition software that can talk to the point of sale.

If object recognition algorithms develop the ability to be aroused by human underwear, we have -other- problems.