Technology

Amazon

Izzy Ashton

Deputy Editor, BITE Creativebrief

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Amazon Echo Look

We live in a world that is permanently and overwhelmingly connected. Technology is helping us to do everything, from simple tasks like switching on the light, to the more complex areas like insuring your drone and driving your car. And, as if the world isn’t judgemental enough, Amazon has just launched the Echo Look, a style assistant camera that helps you decide what to wear.

Many would argue, of course, that this can be one of the more stressful moments of their day, worrying whether the outfit they’re wearing looks good on them or is fashionable. Echo Look has been designed to ease that moment of stress. The Look takes a full length photo or live video of your outfit, using the device’s camera with a built-in LED light and depth sensor to blur out the background of the image, leaving you and your outfit in sharp focus.

The Look lets you catalogue your outfits and rates your look based on machine-learning algorithms and advice from fashion stylists. The Look also works in conjunction with an Amazon app that has a Style Check feature, allowing you to upload two photos, compare them and receive a rating, storing the images in a personal look book. Like the original Echo, you can still ask Alexa to read the news, get traffic estimates, the weather and play music and, as Alexa gets smarter, so too will the Echo Look.

The device comes as part of an expansion into the fashion retail side of Amazon’s business. The Echo Look saves your outfit and can then recommend clothes that are more suited to your style, often from the Amazon store, commercialising this side of the device. It functions like a digital mirror, that has opinions and can also sell you clothes, turning your bedroom into a virtual retailer’s changing room.

The Echo Look is proving problematic as, not only can it hear all, but it can now see all as well. You have the option to switch both the microphone and the camera off, but the video aspect is troubling from a device that is designed to be always on. Especially because it is intended to be placed in the bedroom. It brings technology right into the heart of a person’s private space, confusing the line once again between what is actually private, and what merely seems to be.

Visit Amazon’s Echo Look support page to find out more.