Digital mirrors are already installed in some stores in the USA. In addition, chatting with friends via a bot will be possible in the future.
The makers of the photo app Snapchat want to bring digital mirrors to virtual fittings in shops. Snap executive Jill Popelka said the idea is that it’s better to compile a list of potential purchases before trying them on in a booth. The Snapchat software Snap can make it appear on the screen as if you are wearing an article of clothing. The function became popular in the corona pandemic.
Now it’s set to be more widely available beyond Snapchat. Several of the digital mirrors are currently being tested at Nike and the US chain store Men’s Warehouse. The project is still in its infancy. There is currently no way to buy items directly from the devices. But that is being considered, said Popelka. Retailers decide which items of clothing are offered for virtual try-on.
A beverage vending machine was also developed with Coca-Cola, on whose large screen digital objects can also be mixed with the real environment. It cannot be ruled out that the mirrors will eventually find their way into households.
A chatbot for everyone
Snapchat operating company Snap is also jumping on the current chatbot trend. The service will make its text bot MyAI available to all users free of charge, as co-founder and boss Evan Spiegel announced on Wednesday. With MyAI, users can chat like they’re talking to a real person – and you can also add the bot to text chats with friends.
So far, MyAI was only available to customers of the Snapchat+ subscription service, which costs EUR 3.99 a month in Germany. There is now another new function for them: If you send the chatbot a photo, the software will send back a suitable image that it has generated. Snapchat has three million paying subscribers out of a total of 750 million monthly active users.
New business models necessary
Like the well-known chatbot ChatGPT, MyAI is based on technology from the start-up OpenAI. Such artificial intelligence software generates its own content based on massive amounts of information that it has processed for training. With text, for example, programs like ChatGPT guess word for word how a sentence should continue.
The digital try-on business and subscription revenue have become more important for Snap as online advertising, the mainstay of the company, is weakening. Snapchat originally grew up with photos that disappear on their own. In the meantime, however, the company is relying on the combination of digital effects with the real world on a large scale.
(WHAT)