TL;DR MIT researchers have developed an antitampering ID tag that is tiny, cheap, and secure. It is several times smaller and significantly cheaper than the traditional radio frequency tags that are used to verify product authenticity. The tags use glue containing microscopic metal particles. This glue forms unique patterns that can be detected using terahertz waves. The system uses AI to compare glue patterns and calculate their similarity. The tags could be used to authenticate items too small for traditional RFIDs.
These tags should be smaller and cheaper, offloading tech to the scanners. Since a store uses lots of tags and only a couple scanners, this might make financial sense even if the scanners are more expensive as long as the tags are cheaper and enough of them are needed.