Amazon Echo Look

> Caring that your clothes look good is narcissism (excessive interest in your appearance) now?

As if caring is a binary thing and not a matter of degree? When you pay $200 to have "fashion experts" (or AI) judge your outfits on a daily basis, have you not crossed a line?

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

Yes, I'm sure this won't be used to collect all kinds of personal data for marketing purposes.

/s

This device and use-case are fine and fulfill a real need. The hidden cost of using it is moving the overton window on privacy another notch closer to "panopticon".

I wonder what will be the limit for users?

This plus their fast fashion manufacturing lets amazon end-to-end take over fashion. Get clothing recs, have it delivered tomorrow.

Will be interesting to see if it sticks.

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!

The point is that one doesn't usually purposefully keep our cameras directly pointed at us when we're changing clothes. Cellphones in particular are usually pointed at the table directly under them. Laptops are often more risky, which is why these exist: https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set