It was a simpler time, back in early 2015, when Amazon's Echo first came out as a speaker with a voice assistant inside. Now, the evolution of the Echo family and Alexa brings us a device designed specifically to make you look good. The new $199 Echo Look is the first iteration of Echo that has a camera, and the device uses it to evaluate your outfits, take outfit-of-the-day photos for you to share, and suggest which styles look best on you.
Echo Look deviates from the cylindrical design of other Echo devices: it's a long, pill-like camera with a base so you can stand it up on a shelf or stick it to a wall. Inside is a depth-sensing, 5-megapixel camera and an LED light that you control by saying "Alexa, take a photo" or "Alexa, take a video." An Amazon representative told Ars there's also one physical button on the side of the Echo Look that electronically disconnects the camera and mics. The camera isn't always on, and, like the original Echo, it will only come on when awakened by an "Alexa" command. The photos and videos you take with Echo Look are instantly uploaded to the new Echo Look app (and stored in Amazon's Cloud) where you can share them on social media and build a wardrobe photo-book of different outfits over time. The depth sensor in the camera even lets you blur the background behind you, making your outfit pop amidst your surroundings.
In addition to holding all your outfit photos, the app has a "Style Check" feature that combines Amazon's machine learning algorithms and advice from stylists. Beauty help apps and devices don't have a great track record when it comes to relying on bots, so Amazon's hybrid approach and explicit business intentions will hopefully help the Echo Look avoid the same pitfalls that tripped up Map My Beauty (less than transparent back-end) and Beauty.AI (cultural-specific beauty standards since its bots lacked a large and diverse sample size).
With the Look, take photos of two separate outfits and submit them to Style Check to see which flatters your figure better, which is more on-trend, and other suggestions on which outfit to choose for the day. An Amazon representative told Ars there's also an "Inspired by Your Look" feature in the app that will "help you discover new brands." This is the only explicit e-commerce feature of the Echo Look app, but it's possible Amazon will add more features like this to encourage users to buy clothing and accessories from the online retailer.
On top of the style uses, Echo Look appears to have all the capabilities of Amazon's original Echo, which means it can do nearly anything Alexa can do. The device can play music, update you on weather forecasts and what's on your calendar for the day, control smart home devices, and more. The product's description states it's "always getting smarter," implying that any new features that come to Alexa will likely come to Echo Look.
Echo Look's purpose is niche—not everyone cares enough about their outfit to take photos each day, much less get advice from a virtual stylist. However, that niche is quite big: #OOTD (Outfit of the Day) is one of the most widely used hashtags on social media and has more than 122 million posts on Instagram alone. Unless you have a friend or a full-length mirror, it can also be difficult to take a photo of your outfit by yourself. Amazon is clearly going after fashionistas who regularly document their outfits and want an easier and more efficient way to take, store, and share these kinds of style photos and videos.
For now, the Amazon Echo Look is available on an invite-only basis. Amazon told Ars it won't just be available for Prime members ultimately, but the company wouldn't share a wider release date.
Listing image by Amazon
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