Amazon Wants To Put a Camera and Microphone in Your Bedroom (vice.com)

On Wednesday, Amazon announced the Echo Look, the latest gadget in the company's new Echo-powered hardware lineup. Motherboard explains: The newly announced Echo Look is a virtual assistant with a microphone and a camera that's designed to go somewhere in your bedroom, bathroom, or wherever the hell you get dressed. Amazon is pitching it as an easy way to snap pictures of your outfits to send to your friends when you're not sure if your outfit is cute, but it's also got a built-in app called StyleCheck that is worth some further dissection. [...] "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 for the company said. "You can delete the photos or videos associated with your account anytime in the Echo Look App." Motherboard also asked if Echo Look photos, videos, and the data gleaned from them would be sold to third parties; the company did not address that question.

Comments

God no

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope nope nope nope nope god no nope.

Re:God no

[Anonymous Coward]

Nopers.

Ages ago, a former Houston chief of police was saying that cameras in bedrooms was a good idea. Now, we get people wanting to pay for that. (Remember, if Amazon can look at something, any police department can.)

Re:God no

[cayenne8]

Ok, it's not quite the same form as the Telescreen in 1984...but damned close enough.

Seriously folks...the novel, 1984 was supposed to be a fictional story, not a blueprint for society going forward!!!

Re:God no

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest mis-prediction by Orwell was that he failed to predict we would buy these devices voluntarily with our own money, and put them in our living rooms and bedrooms, carry them around in our pockets, all without being forced to do so. It took no force of law, no coercion.

The world didn't look at his warning with horror, it looked at it with desire and said, "when can we buy that?".

Re: God no

[DaHat]

That is a good solution indeed, for you, but you forget, we are not normal people, this camera is targeted at normal people.

Re: God no

[Austerity Empowers]

Many people charge their cell phones in their bedroom. They have both a camera (usually pretty good too) and a mic. What we really need is laws which require that any device with a camera or a microphone have a physical disable that cannot be overridden by software.

Re:God no

[BigT]

"No. Your bum does that all on its own."

Re:God no

[DontBeAMoran]

Pick one: 1984 or Idiocracy.

Filed under: Nobody needs this!

[King_TJ]

If you can't get dressed on your own without seeking the approval of others (who aren't even in the same room with you) -- then you're already failing at life.

I mean, I realize I'm a guy (and one of those "techie" types who is know not to care about clothing style as much as others). But this is ridiculous, no matter who you are. If you spent hard-earned money on pieces of clothing you've got hanging up in your closet, that means you liked them enough to buy them in the first place. You're just being petty and superficial if you start changing your mind about actually wearing what you, yourself liked and picked out, all because someone else (looking at a digital photo sent over the Internet) disagrees with you.

Re:Filed under: Nobody needs this!

[DaHat]

You must not be married.

While I am happy to grab whatever t-shirt is next in the closet (sometimes the wife tries to arrange them based on the next pair of pants/shorts in the dresser)... my wife is a fair bit more concerned about her look, even though she will often deny it.

It took me a while to realize, but Amazon's target market for quite a few things isn't geeks like us who want some random PC part or book delivered the next day... it's our wives/girlfriends who this is geared towards. Just watch the product video, all women, all into fashion. Sure, not all women are, but if you see enough of them in the wild you see how/why this is a smart move to target them.

Go a bit further, ask married couples around you: Who orders more on Amazon? Who has a higher income in the household? More often than not (doubly so in households with children), the wife spends more on Amazon while the husband is the one paying for most of it.

Note: I'm not saying any of this is good or bad (wrt who spends and who pays), simply that it is a smart move by Amazon to further exploit an area they've targeted for quite some time.

Will be popular

[DogDude]

I think that something like this has the possibility of being really popular. People are really, really stupid, and have little sense of self respect any more.

Nope ^ 1000!

[DrYak]

camera that's designed to go somewhere in your bedroom, bathroom, or wherever the hell you get dressed

and

All photos and video captured with your Echo Look are securely stored in the AWS cloud

What. Could. Possibly. Go. Wrong.

I think this deserve a new concept of "Nope-finity" to be invented, just to have a proper answer.

Re:Nope ^ 1000!

[rickb928]

I don't care where they are stored.

I care HOW they are USED.

No, I won't be using any of these tools any time soon, if ever. Already these services are too intrusive.

Re:Jeff Peeping Bezos

[sinij]

While I agree with your "nakedness shouldn't matter" sentiment, in the current moral and legal context having underage kids changing outfits in front of the internet-connected camera that automatically uploads images to the cloud is all kinds of problematic.

CP question

[rogoshen1]

What would happen if a child wandered in front of the camera nude, and amazon stored that on their server -- would they be responsible for CP?