Alexa Will See You Now

Amazon Releases An Augmented Reality Infused Alexa

Amazon today announced the expansion of its popular Echo line with the $200 Amazon Echo Look, a device that packs in all of the typical Echo functionalities and adds on a hands-free camera with built-in LED lighting that can give users an edge on their wardrobe choices. With Echo Look, users can take full-body photos and videos using their voice, and view the content on the connected Amazon iOS and Android apps. 

Thanks to the Echo Look's depth-sensing camera, users' outfits pop in the foreground while the background is blurred, making it easier to see what they're wearing. Photos can be saved to an ongoing "look book" that will log what users wear every day so as to not duplicate outfits, and the pics can be shared easily on social networks or through texts. Taking a video allows users to quickly replay the clip on their phone so they can see their outfit from every angle in the moment, making it easier to decide on what to wear. 

Echo Look also comes equipped with a machine learning feature called Style Check, allowing users to take two pictures of two separate outfits and compare the two in order to make the best choice. Combined with advice from fashion specialists, Style Check gives users a percentage bar of what outfit works better in the moment, and what fits better on each individual user. 

Fueling Amazon's Fashion Ambitions

The app uses a combination of machine learning and advice from experts in the style space. Letting AI pick out your clothing in the morning should be a pretty interesting experiment.

The app will also recommend styles to users, which presents a pretty clear revenue stream for the company after the hardware has been sold. That, after all, has alway been Amazon’s M.O. when it comes to releasing hardware — sell it cheap and hook people in to buy more stuff through your service. The company has clearly been taking steps to increase style sales through its AmazonFashion vertical, and for those who are interested in such things, this is a pretty decent hardware hook.

Is It 1994?

To me, the device looks a fair bit like one of the latest generation of smart home security cameras, with an oblong shape and a camera, mic and LED array at the bottom. The camera has a built-in depth sensor to blur out everything in the photo, save for the subject.

There’s also, thankfully, a large microphone and camera off button on the side of the device, so it’s not recording every waking moment, a big concern with mounting security questions surrounding these ever more popular devices.

Now that video is being added to this category of always-on devices, a new set of worries is likely to increase among those who were already wary. Hmmm... maybe it's no coincidence that it looks like a security camera.

As a member of Relus' recruiting team, Brian Fink focuses on driving talent towards opportunity. Whether helping startups ascend or enterprises adapt to the unknown, Fink works with innovators who can handle ambiguity of a constantly changing technology landscapes. His career includes 10+ years of successfully scaling IT, Recruiting, Big Data, Product, and Executive Leadership teams across North America. As an active keynote speaker and national commentator on recruiting trends and talent acquisition tactics, Fink focuses on client development, candidate engagement, organizational transformation, and recruiter education. Follow him on Twitter.