That's really not limited to France though. I've seen the same at Tesco, Waitrose and Saintsbury in the UK, in several chains in China, in a bunch of Germany as well (Aldi?), and in Australia (Whoolworths, Coles...). Ikea has had that for a while as well. So has Metro all over the world, obviously.

I have been using self-service checkouts for more than a decade in most countries. I'd be surprised if that was considered news.

Amazon Go and instant payment systems are a different topic entirely though.

Also, "very fast" is debatable: it's often broken, and some items are subject to different buying conditions and can't be purchased via these self-service checkout lanes, like alcohol, or "luxury" items with high margins, like razor blades.

Quite often, if given the choice of an almost empty till queue or a self-service line, I'll pick the almost empty till queue. It's often more efficient.

Self-service is great for 24/7 supermarkets though. I remember really huge Tesco stores in the UK that are but where you can shop at 3AM and use the self-service. Most employees at this time of night are the stock management people, and there's only one or 2 cashiers left (and security, obviously). The rest is self-service. For that scenario, it's indeed convenient.