AICs - Automated Items Checkouts

What is an AIC? 

An AIC is an Automated Items Checkouts machine that allows for the automatic scaling and payment of a customer's order that was used in various stores and shops across the Delta Space. These AICs all worked in similar fashions, the items would all be loaded into a large hopper-like structure, where they would be fed into the machine's interior, scanned, and outputted into bags for carry out by the customer after payment was received. 
The receipt due was calculated as the scanning process was ongoing, showing the total due increase as the items were scanned one by one. In the end, the total would be shown with any appropriate taxes and charges applied. The machine would then offer whatever payment methods were available, which the customer could then complete by inputting into the machine as well. Once the payment was received, the bags of items would be released, being held in a locked compartment until payment was received, and the customer could retrieve them and leave. 

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Why were AICs rendered obsolete?

AICs ended up being widely discontinued across the Delta Space due to an unfortunate glitch that allowed a customer or user to easily subroute its systems for various illicit means. All AIC units ran off a specific artificial intelligence program designed to simply catalogue and add up the various item charges needed, while also creating a sub-routine that told it to not unlock its items cache gate until payment was received. 
However, hackers found that a simple wirelessly readable thumb drive loaded with a bypass code could be dropped into the AIC's hopper along with the items to be paid for. This thumb drive, since it was wirelessly enabled, would be scanned alongside the items, and the machine not knowing the difference between it and the other items would add the embedded code to its total receipt.
Often times these thumb drives could trick the machine into reducing the amount of the bill by nearly 100 percent. The machine not knowing any better just viewed it as a discount code or coupon and let it pass through. Some hackers would even trick the machines into giving returns and hence gained money in the transaction. 
And since all of these machines were left unmanned to save on employee costs, nobody would notice these cheated transactions taking place. The companies only learned that something was amiss when their quarterly earnings came in and they had lost an exorbitant amount of money for some unknown reasons.
Once the ruse was discovered the machines were removed en masse from all locations they were being used. And very few are in existence today, instead, actual employees serve customers and scan each item manually. And only allow for coupon and discount codes that are unexpired to pass their scanners, no thumb drives are allowed.

Summary

An Automated Items Checkout, or AIC, is a mid-sized device that allows a shopper to instantly and also automatically scale and pay for all of their groceries in mere moments.
However, this practice has been abolished in favour of in-person attendants after users of AICs found a rather easily implementable hack that would bypass the systems scaling system and allow for manual entry by the hacker. This allowed shoppers to drastically reduce the price of the items they were purchasing, essentially scamming the store out of enormous amounts of money.

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