Amazon Alexa is a pretty neat bit of kit. The little device lets you ask all sorts of questions and get a response. You can also play games and do shopping with Amazon through it. Sure, you have a microphone in your house that can potentially used to spy on you, but some people find it worth it to be able to order more tube socks with ease.
But now Amazon wants to sick a camera into Alexa and sell it to you as the new Amazon Echo. With this new eyeball in your bedroom you’ll soon be able to ask the opinion of Echo on your outfit so it can judge it, and in turn you. Because if I wanted anything, it’s for a robot to start judging me. I have a family for that, thank you very much.
Echo is designed as a personal assistant that is designed for anyplace that you get dressed. So if having a camera in your room/bathroom wasn’t bad enough, this one really wants to capture you naked. It’s not like nude photos of people have ever been used for nefarious reasons.
The Echo comes with a built-in app known as StyleCheck that will be happy to tell you how terrible your style is, and presumably sell you stuff on Amazon to make you a better consumer. OBEY. OBEY. OBEY.
The big concern that everyone should have is just what the hell does the Echo do with the photos and videos it takes of you in your birthday suit? A spokesperson for Amazon said that “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.” They continued by saying “You can delete the photos or videos associated with your account anytime in the Echo Look App.”
It’s a good thing the cloud is super-duper secure and that no cloud based service has ever been compromised in any way shape or form…
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
How comfortable are you with having an Amazon camera watching you get dressed?
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