Now Amazon Wants us to let an AI Decide What we Should Wear

Does anyone remember the film, “Lawnmower Man”? What about that one time that Edward Snowden told us the government was spying on us on our laptops? Or through our home appliances? How are we still letting AI‘s manage our lives? (Ok, so I sound a little crazy but I’m just trying to play devil’s advocate. We gotta keep our eyes open, don’t we?)

Introducing Echo Look…for all of us who can’t get dressed on our own, retailing at $199 in the U.S. market.

From the article:

“The device is designed to sit on your dresser and when prompted take photos and videos of you and send them to your phone, allowing you to properly assess your outfit — because mirrors are so 2016 apparently. (<–Right?)

And if you don’t fully trust your judgment, it also comes with ‘an easy way to get a second opinion’ An application called Style Check that claims to combine machine learning with the expertise of fashion aficionados will give you personal wardrobe advice “based on current trends and what flatters you”.

And for those of you who care (we all should), all photos and video captured with the Echo Look will be “securely stored in the AWS cloud and locally in the Echo Look app until a customer deletes them.” Sounds safe. Right?

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But, is there more to consider before buying this product? I think so, yes.

This product learns. That means if people send full-length pictures of themselves Echo will know their sexual orientation, whether or not they are pregnant, maybe even if someone is depressed! That feels like a lot of information to just give away to the internet. But, it’s also going to learn about the brands you wear, your style…and that’s good intel that could be sold or worse, stolen. (They would never sell that and tell us it was stolen, right?)

Zeynep Tufekci, a technologist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina is concerned. She wrote, “(We’re) sleepwalking into surveillance capitalism, which is evolving into data and computation driven authoritarianism, one cool service at a time.”