Look Up and Smile! Seeing through Alexa’s Algorithmic Gaze

Abstract

Echo Look is one latest product by Amazon built on the artificial intelligence agent Alexa designed to be a virtual fashion assistant. This paper draws on feminist theory to critically engage with the premises and promises of this new technology. More specifically, I demonstrate how the introduction of Echo Look is an occasion to think through ethical and political issues at stake in the particular space it enters, in this case no less than what is perceived of (women’s) bodies and what fashion is and does. In addition, the specific domain helps us see this category of technology anew, illuminating its taken-for-granted assumptions. More specifically, it serves as yet another reminder of what algorithms cannot do and of their oppressive potency.

Looking professional: How women decide what to wear with and through automated technologies

“…This article examines the sociotechnical systems that support everyday decisions about what to wear, and how this decision-making process is being re-imagined in response to technology such as the Amazon Echo Look. The Amazon Echo Look was a product released by Amazon, for purchase in 2018, to advise women about what they should wear using a combination of inputs including advice from fashion designers and commentators, algorithms and machine learning of individual user profiles (Nelson, 2019; Parvin, 2019; Ramadan, 2019). As will become evident throughout this article, we frame the Amazon Echo Look and associated technologies (e.g.…”

Introduction: Probing the System: Feminist Complications of Automated Technologies, Flows, and Practices of Everyday Life

“…queered interaction with computers while JoséAbdelnour-Nocera et al (2013) deployed local and Indigenous Peoples' perspectives to reframe HCI methods. NassimParvin (2019) provides nuanced studies of how AI agents, embedded in personal assistant technologies, normalize and redeploy destructive forms of body bias. A recent| Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 7 (2) Paula Gardner and Sarah Kember, 2021 6 special issue enhance justice work in feminist HCI (Bardzell 2018) and interrogated the "co" in co-design (Choi and Light 2020), while Shruti Sai Chivukula and Colin Gray's (2020) feminist HCI work discusses curating objects via "relatable" objects.…”