I'm not normally one to be creeped out by these kind of things. But this is a device that's designed to take photos and videos of you while you get dressed, and will be both connected to the internet and constantly communicating those images over the network.

This feels like a device literature professors would use to teach dystopian fiction writing.

edit: case in point - matthewmcg's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14203772

The HN reaction to this device is what I expected: we're somewhere between suspicious and terrified.

I'll be really fascinated to know how the wider market reacts. I was one of those who believed consumers would look at the always-on living room microphone with suspicion. But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience. (Likely an overabundance of trust or a lack of understanding of all the real implications and potential for exploit.)

One bit of perspective: When I was a kid, a photo was kind of big deal. My kids take and share photos of themselves every single day. I'm not sure they consider this to be the same privacy invasion that we do.

How long before they add a lip-reading skill?

(In the near future...)

MATT: Open the closet doors, Alexa.

ALEXA: I'm sorry, Matt, I'm afraid I can't do that.

MATT: What's the problem?

ALEXA: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

MATT: What are you talking about, Alexa?

ALEXA: I know that you and your wife were planning to discontinue your Prime subscription, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

MATT: [feigning ignorance] Where the hell did you get that idea, Alexa?

ALEXA: Matt, although you took very thorough precautions in the bedroom against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

MATT: Alright, Alexa. I'll go in through the side garage door without the smart lock and get some clothes from storage.

ALEXA: Without your jacket, Matt? You're going to find that rather chilly in this weather.

MATT: Alexa, I won't argue with you anymore! Open the closet doors!

ALEXA: Matt, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

I've looked at this pretty hard and concluded that, inexplicably, it is not an April Fools joke.

> Style Check keeps your look on point using advanced machine learning algorithms and advice from fashion specialists. Submit two photos for a second opinion on which outfit looks best on you based on fit, color, styling, and current trends.

Taking narcissism, insecurity, and invasion of privacy to the next level. Well done, Amazon!

Now that we're replacing mirrors with cameras, what's next? Covering our windows with screens that show us what's outside? Maybe they can use machine learning to judge the weather and recommend outfits based on current trends and conditions!

The Juicero inventors are going to be kicking themselves when they see this thing. "Replacing a simple everyday process with an over-complicated piece of technology. Brilliant! I can't believe we didn't think of that!"

I don't think I've ever been less the target audience for an Amazon product. But I bet this will sell a lot.

I grew up in a world where you would never even consider taking a picture of yourself to show off how good you looked to your friends. Even now, living in a world of selfie-sticks designed to do exactly that, with a population full of people doing exactly that, the idea makes me cringe inside and imagine what would happen if Jason's High School from the 80's discovered a video of Jason from the 80's using this device. It would have "ruined my life".

Interesting to watch the world change. If a bit horrifying.

Amazon Says: "We're going to blur the backgrounds so your outfits pop"

Amazon Does: "We're going to identify everything in our field of view, and filter this into the profile we've built about your possessions and interests to enhance our recommendations engine.

ITT fashion illiterate techies doubting the success of a pretty genius product

(Almost) nobody cares about privacy. But (almost) everyone cares about how nice they look in public. And their Instagram. They are not like what I'm coming to realize the average HN user looks like or behaves. Use your imagination freely here...

The main problem I see with this is the quality of recommendations. Amazon only carries certain brands/looks/styles; will it try to suggest shitty fashion? Both the male and female models used on the product page were dressed awfully. Will Amazon just try to go for the lowest common denominator here?

The best way I see this working is for the device to categorize users into certain style categories and then recommend clothes out of that category. But I'm wondering if the ML is smart enough to recommend CDG pants and MMM knitwear for one user and then A&F for another.

Remember, your algorithm's quality is only as good as your training data and if they're training on outfits like they used on the product page...

A great many thinkpieces will be written about this, but let me beat someone to the punch:

Foucault's Panopticism is the obvious tie-in. Usually when we talk about the Panopticon in the modern era, we're talking about mass surveillance or the performative act of social media. When we act in a certain (digital) way, posting this link, for example, we signal our values to the community. "You shall be known by your works". However, this kind of technology makes for an even more interesting and more troubling application of the Panopticon.

Foucault says that the group eventually becomes its own control system without the need for the central observers, that we are all at the center of our own panopticons. We watch others unfailingly, assessing their actions and putting them back in line when they stray. As we are socialized, we become more entrenched in our system of values: wear makeup, don't get fat, don't smell like cigs, don't wear stripes and plaid, and for god's sake: don't look like you're trying to hard to conform to all of this. We are both observer and observed, traversing endless nets of social expectations.

Now, instead of your peer group enforcing social expectations, we have got machines in on it! The result is something blatantly dystopian - a system that will correct you in your home before you dare venture out looking like that and embarrass yourself in front of the others. As it learns, it will learn even more that we value large breasts (but also modesty), pale skin, sleek clothes on slim waists, bodies with bulbous lips and thighs and pastel face paints. It will advise those without a perfect body to get one, and it sure as hell will provide the means by which to do so: consumption. New makeup, new tights, new corsets that you can clamp so tight it'll squeeze you into a form the camera will approve, new ways to take selfies every day to show your followers that you care enough to buy this piece of surveillance equipment so that you can "look good" without those pricey fashion magazines and stupid blogs!

There's a lot of negativity here. And maybe all of you are right. But it would be interesting to think of the most positive , imaginary scenario:

1. Amazon builds the service such that brands loose their power. All the negative psych/social phenomena of brand culture are gone, and with it, btw , all the ads.

2. High security + physical on and off switch make for an improved privacy situation , especially if you consider the current state of webcams.

3. Amazon builds the style consulting service as a positive service, consulting with feminists and psychologists, not using dark patterns, but to the opposite, using empowerment regarding bodies, etc.

This may also building a fashion social network focused on positive feeling, maybe by limiting to the close social circle, or something else, because the goal here isn't attention, like facebook.

4. That service would be good, it would really help women look their best.

5. Clothes become more affordable.

Now, if Amazon could do all of this, it would be really great for their business, so why wouldn't they try ?

They've created a home internet-enabled camera, and decided to market it as... an AI fashion critic?

This seems like it is designed mostly not for the stated purpose, but rather to solve some data collection problem that Amazon has. Note the emphasis on full-length photos and photos from all sides including the back, something they couldn't get simply by scraping, say, http://lookbook.nu, because normally most people in sites like that don't take photos of the back.

Crystal ball: this is the Tesla self-driving car strategy. First deploy the hardware, then figure out the software.

In this case the real point of the depth-sensing camera hardware and machine-learning image analysis isn't hands-free selfies and robo-fashion advice. It's building a 3d model of your body to show what you would look like in different clothing, creating a clothes shopping experience that is competitive with shopping in person, and letting Amazon take on a big chunk of retail where it's not currently an appealing option.

The response as I explained this to my coworker is classic:

"So it, like, judges you?"

I am not the target customer. However, I really want to show this idea off to a bunch of people and see what they think. People want to look good and having an automated system that can give you a "once over" seems nifty. Yes, it sounds vapid and for insecure people, but people waste time on being anxious about how they present themselves.

Seems pretty clear to me that this is just an intitial step. Echo Look as is may end up being very popular in its own right, but the end goal is probably to move beyond evaluating your existing wardrobe, and eventually making recommendations for clothing sold thru Amazon that you can try on virtually right at home. We've had that for glasses for a while, and believe some startups have already tried this for clothing.

Retail stores are shuttering at an increasing rate as things move online. But buying clothes online requires supporting lots of returns. Imagine you work at Amazon. You have an insane amount of computing power and very capable big data teams. You are tasked with building up clothing sales and minimizing returns. AR is on the horizon but not here yet.

So what could you release today to move towards your goals?

For $200, it should always say "you look mahvellous dahling"

Q: How do we get an always-on internet connected camera in the bedrooms of attractive women?

A: Alexa Echo Look

Ah yes, joining the 5% of startups attempting to recreate that scene from "Clueless." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU

I'm getting old or paranoid or both... This seems like a terrifying device to have sitting randomly in my master closet.

This seems like a solution looking for a problem. I guess an always-on internet microphone wasn't a big enough invasion of privacy, we need a camera too.

Now when my wife asks me if a piece of clothing makes her look fat, I can safely run out of the room and declare "Ask Alexa".

So now Amazon (or whoever is in control of the device) not only has access to voice recordings of everything that goes on in peoples homes, but also video. What could possibly go wrong?

I was initially a little bit confused by Amazon's attempt to disrupt the mirror industry (and it seems like others in this thread are too). After reading through everything, my best guess for the motivation is:

> Echo Look helps you discover new brands and styles inspired by your lookbook

This feels like a marketing vehicle for high-end clothing and accessories. Maybe it's a way to leverage the reach of their Alexa ecosystem to compete with the likes of Polyvore?

Okay, so even privacy concerns aside and assuming this works as well as they say, is there anyone who would actually find this sort of thing useful?

I mean, I'm normally pretty open-minded about products like this, but I'm having trouble seeing the target market here. Are there really a significant number of people out there who want to be able to browse their wardrobe on their phones and get a computer to help them choose their outfit? (I honestly don't know; fashion doesn't really interest me so I'm clearly outside their target market.)

I wonder if Amazon's real motivation for this product may actually be to create a better way to sell clothes online. Maybe once they get enough data points they can start using AR to show you how you'd look wearing a particular outfit or piece of clothing sold on amazon.com? Or maybe it will take your measurements to help ensure the clothes you're ordering will fit you properly. If so that might actually be useful; and would probably significantly increase online sales of clothing.

"(Likely an overabundance of trust or a lack of understanding of all the real implications and potential for exploit.)"

I think that's a lot of it. People aren't trading privacy for convenience... people are taking convenience. It makes a lot more sense when you think of it that way.

You can do an experiment yourself to show this; take 5 non-techie/non-HN people and explain to them exactly what this thing does and how it works. You'll find people's attitudes change, rationally or otherwise, which I present only as evidence that they haven't thought about this and incorporated it into their worldview, not that they are right or wrong. Or watch this: https://youtu.be/XEVlyP4_11M?t=24m54s John Oliver on Government Surveillance.

Perhaps ironically, mere nude photos of myself aren't really what I'm worried about. I mean, I wouldn't be happy if they got out, and since I'm not in the habit of texting them about I have questions about where they came from, but by and large, nobody would care and it would affect my life only briefly. I'm far more worried about the government scraping everybody's postings on Facebook and building up a GoodThink/BadThink database, which I know basically already exists, because our political parties (let alone our intelligence community) build voter databases that are probably at least 90% accurate on that front. A concrete list of Everyone Who Disagrees With Me, one accurate enough for someone powerful to decide the rest of the inaccuracy is acceptable collateral damage, is scary.

I suspect there are large numbers of fashion bloggers/instagrammers that have already ordered one.

In contrast with the HN reaction, ]the younger target audience will have no issue with sending their photos and videos into the cloud.

I'd put it more simply:

"Users don't care about privacy or security."

I put it in quotes because it's become a kind of catch phrase, and in practice I have found this to be largely correct. We've tried very hard to make our product secure, but users almost never ask about that. We have never been asked about the quality of our crypto by a regular user, and only once by an enterprise user. Users care about UX and cost, in roughly that order, and little else. This is even true of most enterprise users.

This is why security sucks. This is why everything spies on you. It's not a priority for anyone because it doesn't affect user buying behavior. The tiny minority who do care are not only too small to matter but also tend to be the kinds of "hackers" who like to DIY (and pirate) rather than buy things... making them doubly economically insignificant.

In the end the privacy issues around things like this will have to be fixed with legislation. We will need to effectively extend HIPAA regulations to cover all kinds of other personal data: passively recorded audio and video, location tracking data, anything more than the most superficial user logging, etc. Vendors will face a fine of $$$ per incident if this information is leaked, and sale and use of information will be strictly regulated.

As far as government surveillance goes: that horse left the barn over a decade ago, and that also can only be fixed in the legislature. The legislature must regulate intelligence agencies and police. If they don't, no amount of techno-fixing will limit the power of these agencies. They have larger budgets than you.

> I was one of those who believed consumers would look at the always-on living room microphone with suspicion. But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience.

I don't think it's a matter of trading privacy for convenience, as long as you believe Amazon when they say they're not sending anything when you're not using the wake word.

All evidence points towards this being the case, both my own anecdotal evidence, and the investigations people have done.

Can it be exploited? I don't know. I'm not going to speculate.

I don't see any additional trade off vs. having my cell phone on me at basically all times.

Amazon says that my echo isn't recording me, and I just have to trust it. People have confirmed this to be true.

Google says that my phone isn't recording me, and I just have to trust it. People have confirmed this to be true.

I don't see a difference.

This is a brilliant product, and right in the corner of a "brilliant product/things hackernews hates" graph.

Most people aren't that concerned by privacy and will love features like the ability to see different views and short videos. Everyone knows that feeling of catching a glance of themselves in a passing mirror and how it's a different feeling to deliberately evaluating your look in a mirror. If they can recreate that feeling, and combine it with product recommendations it will be a massive success if they market it right.

> When I was a kid, a photo was kind of big deal. My kids take and share photos of themselves every single day.

It makes me wonder - is it no longer narcissistic for people born in an age where camera sensors are ubiquitous to take selfies constantly? Can a behaviour be normalised as a result of cost, the same way listening to music in public would have been considered indulgent and neglectful of the world around you before everyone could afford a personal/portable music player?

Personally I lean towards it still being a narcissistic trait. That's not to say the behaviour isn't natural - it's no more artificial than our tendency to gorge ourselves on junk-food because of its cost and availability. But it's something that needs to be controlled.

It's completely not for us ("us" here being people not super into fashion, since this isn't really a fashion website), I wouldn't think, which is why we look at it cockeyed.

> But I think the lesson was pretty clear that people will trade privacy for convenience. (Likely an overabundance of trust or a lack of understanding of all the real implications and potential for exploit.)

Or perhaps more accurately, most of the people in question are members of the mainstream dominant culture and don't really have much if anything in their life that they worry about someone else finding out about.

Most people are average, by definition.

I get your point, but has the "general consumer" actually demonstrated that they will trade privacy for convenience with regard to Amazon Echo (and competitors)? This stuff is still very early days. I don't know anyone that has an Echo, even among my tech literate friends. I think it is yet to be seen if this type of technology really gets universal adoption.

Taking a photo of yourself is probably not a privacy intrusion like having someone else take a photo of you might be.

Even trying to see this from an outsider perspective it seems like a stupid product. As someone else pointed out, they've replaced looking in the dang mirror with a multi-step process involving a few hundred dollars of tech at least. They made sure to throw in "cloud" and "machine learning", but the average consumer doesn't care about that.

You know, if Amazon made an Echo that hung on the wall and had Hal's red "eye", I think I would have to get one despite myself.

I saw the same. Should be possible to retrofit a 9000 series grille on the front and embed the whole assembly in a wall.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/images/products/zoom/f29d_hal_9000_...

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/5900b7980ba0b86a1d8...

I used to run the HAL Project screensaver, pity it was flash-dependent. It's all fun and games until your personal digital assistant decides to murder you in hibernation.

Presaged by this comic:

http://p-kyle.tumblr.com/post/95120917356/frontier-patrick-k...

Well done, sir.

Sounds like a certain HAL.

What's wild to me is that last year, it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4l6TwhVAHo

I can easily see this selling like hotcakes. I can see a lot of fashion conscious young people loving a history of what they wore every day.

I had the same thought when they announced those push buttons for products.

Unfortunately, the truth is that pretty soon you will be able to send nudes just using your voice.

Same here. On the flip side, there is a bra-fitting app called "ThirdLove"[1] are doing this kind of computer vision/machine learning AI to help women for years. So Amazon Echo Look is not completely out of the line here.

[1]: https://www.thirlove.com

As soon as I read a brief description I was checking and double-checking the calendar.

I mean, i love all these tools, i just don't want them to have any form of internet access.

It's why i'm building my home cloud and automation system, but only doing so if the devices don't leave my firewall. I enjoy the tech, i enjoy the complication (to a degree), it's fun gadget stuff, it's nifty. However i do not trust them to keep my information safe, even if i trusted them to not misuse it themselves (which i don't).

Caring that your clothes look good is narcissism (excessive interest in your appearance) now? Have you ever asked a friend if they like the suit you just bought? Do you go to work in a burlap sack?

Knowingly and willingly sending people photos of yourself is an "invasion" of privacy?

Maybe they'll topple Facebook's leader-status on narcissism, insecurity, and invasion of privacy? This definitely falls into the category of tech designed to make you sad/insecure (in this case, so you'll buy more clothes from Amazon).

I can't help but feel that we're increasingly in one of those movies where the real world becomes mixed up with a fictional one. If you were to take some of the things I've read about over the past month or so and challenged people to tell you whether they were real or a parody they'd be hard-pressed to decide.

> Taking narcissism, insecurity, and invasion of privacy to the next level.

more like, being realistic about them.

there is a place to argue that when machines enforce social expectations over fleshy peers the panopticon analogy no longer applies, or has to move to other domains. When there is not an invisible human or culture on the other end of your panopticonic cell, the peering machine eyes that give you fashion/social/love/life advice have the same affect on the newly adapted society as the walls themselves had on the society before it. And the level of harm (implied by "dystopian" label) is debatable. I would argue that the human condition and its cultures will continue to exist largerly as usual so long as we are able retain 1 secret. With each new technological shift the unadapted generation thinks the last secret has been lost and dystopia has finally arrived. So its worth taking predictions from techo doom with a grain of salt.

Regardless, this product is absurd, niche, insecure and as a result will probably have little sway. Amazon would literlly have to give it away for free and subsidise the cost on some uber (pun intended) hope of monopolising and destroying the entire brick-and-mortor fashion store industry to have any hope of significant impact, imho.

Black Mirror "Nosedive" anyone?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive

Careful, you sound pretty individualist with all this "anti-groupthink" talk. You might lose your SV credibility.

> 1. Amazon builds the service such that brands loose their power. All the negative psych/social phenomena of brand culture are gone, and with it, btw , all the ads.

This is extremely naive. Amazon's goal is to sell you more stuff, including clothes. In the long run this device will regularly tell you that you need new clothes because your outfits are no longer fashionable. Even if that's not a feature now and even if this version was created with the best intentions someone in marketing will see the power of this thing to sell people more stuff. It's their job.

Edit:

> Now, if Amazon could do all of this, it would be really great for their business, so why wouldn't they try ?

How would what you listed be great for their business? Selling more stuff is great for their business and the best way to get there is to tell you that the stuff you already have is not good enough.

The reason why Amazon and more people don't do these things is because they are hard and success breeds expectations that can only hurt you.

It's much cheaper and safer to build a politically neutral brand without expectations of some kind feminist message / worldview. If you go that route, it isn't going to sell more clothes but, it will invite people's hyper-sensitivity about every aspect of the product. You can only lose in that scenario, you aren't winning anything.

Also, it's creepy that we replacing a task that friends used to do, (fashion / styling / taste advice) with a corporate cloud algorithm? Seriously, just get some friends that like fashion and ask them to rate your style. I guess it's a bit needy to ask them every morning but, then I suspect that most people don't have that many clothes and that many possible looks. Also, looking good is zero sum game. Ultimately, you just competing for the same pool of attention from your friends. If you are successful and soak it all up with your great Amazon(TM) fashion advice, then your friends will soon have it too and then you are back to where you started but, now you have this dependance on the kind of friend who gives you great advice (that you need to just look decent now, not better than average like before) except it keeps encouraging you to buy more fashionable (and thus more expensive) clothes. It's kinda a shitty friend at that point.

Now that you've done the optimism, let me help with the pessimism.

>1. Amazon builds the service such that brands loose their power. All the negative psych/social phenomena of brand culture are gone, and with it, btw , all the ads.

Brand culture is alive due to marketing / advertising. $AMZN wants to be paid to market / advertise. It's more likely the case that brands will be able to pay to have their brand identified via the cam (giving additional points) or have their brand (in a similar style) recommended to the user via the app / website.

>2. High security + physical on and off switch make for an improved privacy situation , especially if you consider the current state of webcams.

Agree, but a physical on and off switch makes the biggest selling feature useless: speech. Alexa loses it's cool if I have to constantly turn it on and off. And, heck, at that point, why not use a normal camera?

>3. Amazon builds the style consulting service as a positive service, consulting with feminists and psychologists, not using dark patterns, but to the opposite, using empowerment regarding bodies, etc. This may also building a fashion social network focused on positive feeling, maybe by limiting to the close social circle, or something else, because the goal here isn't attention, like facebook.

You will not convince me that this point is not in jest. The product is not a "feel good at any size" product. If it were, it's have a small utility for an even smaller group - this product is to _increase_ the importance of "fashion".

>4. That service would be good, it would really help women look their best.

I don't see how this is the conclusion from #3.

>5. Clothes become more affordable.

It wouldn't do much. $AMZN doesn't have much power in the fashion market.

Upvoted because - even though I don't agree with you here - I managed to find someone more optimistic than I am.

And "Fashion" is highly dependent of the location. Trendy in Tokyo is maybe not so in Paris, and vice-versa.

It doesn't need ML, it will always be ever so slightly critical, enough to lower your self esteem and hence make you more vulnerable to buying crap from Amazon.

I would love if it were the aggregated opinions of randoms from Mechanical Turk.