When you want feedback on an outfit, you can ask Alexa to take a picture or video. The camera is oriented so it can take a full-body image from a reasonably close distance. It then applies a “depth-effect,” which strongly resembles the fake background blur you’ll find in the iPhone 7 Plus Portrait Mode. From there, users dive into the companion app, in which they can browse a Look Book full of past styles, share photos, and call up fashion advice from the Style Check app. This style feedback certainly won’t appeal to everyone, especially people whose wardrobes have little variety (who can tell one of my black t-shirts from another?), but equipping Alexa with a robotic eye does open up a lot of potential future functionality in terms of usability, entertainment, and of course, shopping. Adding cameras to virtual assistants is an obvious step forward and it seems very likely that the other AI butlers of the world will put more and more emphasis on being able to see us in addition to hearing us. Let’s just hope they have a good sense of style.
