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A petition to stop the rollout started by a disability campaigner has gathered almost 250,000 signatures since May last year.
Critics object to the technology on the grounds that they are harder for people without credit cards, the elderly and many disabled people to use.
Customers had threatened to protest against the checkout switch at the annual general meeting, although ultimately no demonstration took place.
Mr Murphy sought to soothe concerns on Friday, saying the roll-out did not pose a threat to jobs at Tesco.
He said: “This is not, by the way, designed to replace people. Quite the opposite. All of our people are trained to be multitaskers to do a number of different things in the store.
“What we realised is that for the majority of the time, we can use self-checkout to liberate people to do things in shops to make sure that there are products on the shelves, to help people find products if they need it, and to make sure that the shopping trip is a good shopping trip.”
Mr Murphy was speaking as Tesco released a trading update in which it hailed “encouraging early signs” that price rises for many grocery essentials were starting to moderate.
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