Amazon wants you to use artificial intelligence to decide what to wear

AMAZON’S fancy new device may sound like a godsend, designed to help you every morning. Unfortunately, it comes with big, fat “but”.

AMAZON is jumping on the success of its artificially intelligent home speaker, bringing a new version into the bedroom to help solve the daily dilemma of deciding what to wear.

But the quirky new product has prompted warnings that we’re “sleepwalking into surveillance capitalism.”

The device is designed to sit on you 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.

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”.

Some of the most well known tech barons of our time such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are famous for wearing pretty much the same outfit everyday.

But Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos clearly understands the rest of us are vain enough to think AI cloud computing is required to get dressed in the morning.

If you’re one of those security conscious people — like Mark Zuckerberg — who covers their laptop camera with tape, you’re definitely not going to be running out to buy an Echo Look, which will retail for $US199 in the American market.

The idea of putting a camera and microphone on your bedside table no doubt has already attracted the attention of hackers.

But there is more to consider than just this potential threat.

Jeff Bezos is one of the most fervent adopters of AI technology, and as machine learning improves, so too will the power of his products.

As Zeynep Tufekci, a technologist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina pointed out, if users were to send regular full length pictures of themselves standing in their bedroom, Amazon’s AI algorithms could glean a lot of information from that over time.

In a string of tweets this morning she raised the alarm about such devices, painting a rather fatalistic picture.

“(We’re) sleepwalking into surveillance capitalism, which is evolving into data and computation driven authoritarianism, one cool service at a time,” she wrote.

With this data, Amazon won't be able to just sell you clothes or judge you. It could analyze if you're depressed or pregnant and much else. pic.twitter.com/irc0tLVce9

— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) April 26, 2017

This kind of data can reveal a lot about your health status, too. Also. Sexual orientation? Big five personality? All your moods? Likely.

— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) April 26, 2017

Amazon's Echo Look can likely predict clinical depression months *before* onset of clinical symptoms. Will it be used to avoid hiring you?

— Zeynep Tufekci (@zeynep) April 26, 2017

With any internet-connected smart product these days, it’s wise to assume that it stores all its interactions on a server somewhere, and the Echo Look is no different.

“All photos and video captured with your Echo Look are securely stored in the AWS cloud and locally in the Echo Look app until a customer deletes them,” a spokesperson told Motherboard.

When it knows just about everything you have in your wardrobe, that is some potentially lucrative information to sell to advertisers and the fashion industry.

Echo Look might be cool and it might be mildly useful or fun, but when putting on our Sunday best, do we really need the help of a digital assistant?