Amazon’s new $200 Echo Look camera will judge how you look

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From The Verge:

Amazon today announced a new device for the Echo family: the Echo Look, a “style assistant” camera that helps catalog your outfits and rates your look based on “machine learning algorithms with advice from fashion specialists.” Imagine it as a smart mirror of sorts — you can talk to the Echo Look to take full-length photos or short videos to check out your outfit from seldom-seen angles.

The Echo Look first leaked as a “security camera” back in March, and the photo matches exactly with what Amazon has announced today. The device comes with a built-in LED light, a microphone, and a base mount for you to attach it to the wall or leave it freestanding. It will also work with a companion app that has a Style Check feature to compare two outfits and rate which is better. As an aside, the Amazon iOS app offers a similar feature under the Programs and Features menu, if you don’t want to buy the Echo Look. The Echo version of the feature gives you a percentage rating of outfits based on a mix of algorithm and stylist opinions, while Outfit Compare on the Amazon app picks which outfit of the two it likes better.

Like the original Echo speaker, you can ask Alexa on the Echo Look to read you news, play music, or get traffic estimates. Amazon says it will continue to add Alexa skills for the Echo Look as well.

Link to the rest at The Verge

Here’s a link to Echo Look, including videos

PG is several parsecs away from Amazon’s target consumer for this device, but he wonders how many people perceive a need for this service/device.

Of course, PG is not a selfie sort of guy so that places him several megaparsecs away from the target.

30 thoughts on “Amazon’s new $200 Echo Look camera will judge how you look”

  1. I personally could not own something like this because it would take it’s first picture of me and then explode and burn down the house.

    I _am_ quite interested in hearing other opinions though.

  2. I’m not a selfie person either, and there’s not much to judge in my outfits: jeans, sneakers, t-shirt or sweatshirt, but I still asked for an invitation to buy it. I’m an Amazon junkie and it’s too cool to pass up. Retailers need to stick the Look in fitting rooms, along with a delete button when the customer is finished making a decision re what outfit to buy.

    • It’s not “cool”. It’s one more step towards the uniformization and robotization of the human race.

      • I have a far more lighthearted outlook on life.

        I told a friend who has a new grandchild that the Look will let her make videos with the baby in which she, too, can appear. So far, every video she has sent me shows just the baby.

        • Errr… I just don’t see the point. Couldn’t she do videos of the baby before having such an intrusive device at home ?

          • First, I don’t consider the Look intrusive. You tell it when to wake. It doesn’t record you till the wake word is spoken. Second, yes, she has been taking videos of the baby — but she (grandma) has to hold the camera. With the look, she doesn’t have to hold it…she can be in the videos with the baby.

      • Some might think so but the point of this particular application of computer vision is already out there:

        https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=digital+fitting+room&qpvt=digital+fitting+room&qpvt=digital+fitting+room&qpvt=digital+fitting+room&FORM=IGRE

        It’s just very, very expensive.
        What Amazon is doing is starting to bring it to the masses so that the elites aren’t the only ones that can afford custom-fitted clothes. Worth pointing out Amazon recently filed a patent for the equivalent of POD for their warehouses. So somewhere along the road Echo Look might scan a customer placing an order, show them how they would look in the clothes and *then* pass the order to the tailor-on-demand clothier for next day delivery.

        Welcome to the 21st century, when robotization no longer means uniformization but rather customization.

        • The problem, if I read the excerpt corectly, is that this device is supposed to JUDGE your look, based on an AI made of the hive-mind of “fashion specialists”. That’s the surest way towards uniformization.

          • That is one optional feature.
            And what it does is compare two separate outfits against each other, not in absolute terms.
            So it’s more a matter of “red tie or blue tie with this suit” than “this is what the cool kids are wearing”.

            Strictly optional. And a bit of a trojan.

            The interesting stuff is what comes next when develooers start tapping into the computer vision APIs and cooking up new features.

  3. “AlexaLook, how do I look?”
    “You look mahhhhvalus!”
    “Oh, thank you so much, AlexaLook.”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.”

    • I’m recalling the lawsuits about a school having the school owned (on loan to the kids) laptops snapping pictures of teens in their bedrooms in different stages of dress.

      I do hope Amazon has a little something to protect themselves from doing the same …

        • That helps, but if the customer turns it on for a selfie or for security and then forgets to turn it back off Amazon may get more than they really want.

          (Yes, I understand Amazon’s ToS will help protect them, but if a court demands ‘everything from X address/account’ when looking into a crime, Amazon may end up being ‘exposed’ as having more than their customers thought they could/should have.)

  4. After getting the email about this, I checked my calendar to see if we’d somehow reverted to April 1st…

  5. Amazon is already a major clothing retailer.
    Now, consider, how many of those customers would have a use for digital fittings?

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_dressing_room

    Once upon a time putting microphones and a digital assistant on a bluetooth speaker sounded crazy, no?

    What this really means is Alexa is moving on from just voice recognition to computer vision.

  6. Men may not get this as much as women, but think of all the times you try on multiple outfits for hubby’s opinion. Now you can get an objective opinion with some science supposedly behind it. I’m not sure yet how I feel about it but I would certainly try it. My husband on the other hand, is sure to be a big fan if he doesn’t have to provide an opinion on whether outfit A is more slenderizing than outfit B and which one makes my butt look better.
    I will probably give it a quick try on my iOS app.

    • +1

      The first thing I thought when I saw the email about this in my inbox was: “My teenage daughter would love this!” And why should she not? I agree with Seer that it could be quite handy.

    • Most husbands would agree that alone is worth the price of admission.
      Divorce lawyers might not agree, though.

    • My mother thought that was the advantage of having a daughter. My father said to her once, “Before Jamie came along, you asked me how your clothes look.”

      She smiled and said, “I didn’t have a choice before. Now I do.”

      Since I’m out of the house this would be a great invention for her 🙂

    • I can relate to that. I look at beige and see gray. I look at gray and see beige. When I look at them together, I see the difference. Sometimes in stores I ask bystanders which color an item is.

    • That’s exactly who I thought of. I had a great biology teacher in high school who was severely color blind, and the days he left for work while his wife was asleep were often amusing. (It got so bad his students made him a color chart to help him out. It took about three weeks before he realized they’d deliberately mislabeled several of the colors!)

  7. justwhat I need
    i still am startled at ‘who is that old person standing in the window of that store” when walking into the city where they have mirrors in the windows.

    boots and serviceable clothes, a good widebrim stetson, good gauntlet gloves, aviators, a duster if rain, a belted parka if snow, and all set. Dont want anything diff.

  8. Black suit, white shirt, black tie; black tee shirt, cheap blue jeans. Professional attire for all occasions.

  9. Don’t need a device. I have two very articulate and hypercritical daughters to provide “loving feedback” (their term) or “devastating criticism” (my term), every time I don an article of clothing.

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