The Widget
Posts
Snap expands AR in commerce & pressing pause on AI

Snap expands AR in commerce & pressing pause on AI

Nicky Barton
March 30, 2023

👋Hello! Welcome to the 3 new subs this week, pleasure having you here.👋The French show us all how to protest/not give a shit that people are protesting, the duality is astounding. Labor claims another state, more AI advances, and Collingwood are good at football.

👀Things you may have missed👀

🤯The BIG stories🤯

Snapchat's parent company Snap wants to be the go-to source for augmented reality in commerce. To make it happen, they're launching "Shopping Suite," a set of try-on and sizing tools for retail. It's a game-changer for e-commerce, or as Snap likes to call it, "AR-commerce!"

Disclaimer: they do not like to call it that. An interesting and very smart pivot from Mr. Spiegel, it’s obviously a challenge to get shoppers without the Snap app to try on - so they’re bringing the party to the shopper.

❝

The first (component) is “AR Try-On,” which allows shoppers to “try on” items like sunglasses and shirts by interacting live with a filter or by uploading a photo of themselves. The second is “3D Viewer,” which allows shoppers to move the screen to see a product, like a shoe, from multiple angles. The third, “Fit & Sizing,” uses AI and returns data to suggest which size of clothing or footwear would be best for a particular customer.

😎Cool & Creative😎

Unless you can remember when peace & love was a thing, or when the Beatles released their seminal album, it’s highly likely that you don’t use Travel Agents. Well, that’s another job gone with the introduction of TripNotes.ai, have a play and witness the magic.

Last week OpenAI announced that they’d be releasing API integrations into your favourite tools for productivity such as Zapier, Wolfram & Expedia. Expect many more front-end examples like this to pop up to assist in the mundane every day, how exciting!

💸Commerce Corner💸

This week, Amazon announced it will close 8 of its 29 Amazon Go convenience stores in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle, after debuting the “just walk out” cashier-less technology in 2016. The locations of these closures are notable- as Seattle and SF downtown areas have struggled to return to pre-COVID activity levels, and the beloved neighborhood bodega culture in NYC remains strong

Also noteworthy that Amazon will continue the cashier-less checkout tech across more Amazon Fresh, Whole Foods, and 3rd party stores globally, showing a future for the convenience feature in licensing. However, lessons can be drawn for digital-first brands looking to expand into physical retail space- what works well online may still need a touch of humanity IRL.

🤓Technology & Tracking🤓

Stop the robots! They're getting too smart and we don't know what they're up to. Elon Musk & other smart cookies are demanding that we hit the pause button on developing AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for six months, and come up with some safety protocols that even grandma can understand.

In the open letter/petition, many big names in the field of computing, engineering, and yes, AI have called for a pause on bigger models. The concern is we go from Artificial intelligence to Artificial General intelligence, and we’ve all seen that movie before.