Like Instagram’s Nametags, which worked with a QR code to be scanned by viewers in order to get more information on products identified in a photo, Snapchat’s new Scan camera feature quenches our mind’s need for thinking. The feature is an impressive AI technology that has been years in the making as Snapchat has been continuously adding several identification app partners to increase the array of products Scan can recognize, including dogs.
When activated, the Scan makes several screens pop up displaying information about a particular product in the photo you are looking at as well as links to where to buy it.
With the use of AI for these type of enhancements to our favorite social media Snapchat increases it’s potential to increase the profitability of its business by maybe, someday, sharing in the sales made from its platform. Our lives become easier and more fulfilling by making products we may be interested in readily available.
In the future, it is not tough to imagine the profitability sharing being extended even to us the consumer as we share the photos with our friends, family and other online communities.
In the meantime, the dynamics of what the AI features that Snapchat, Instagram and others insert into their platforms continues to feed our limited self. By feeding an unaware mind more information into our already information loaded lives, it may be adding to the stress of our every day. Thus emphasizing the botched notion that accumulation of material items will make us more happy.
Perhaps we do get a level of enjoyment and pleasure from the increased shopping enabled by this type of AI, but true happiness is found when we understand that things just add to the pleasure of the life experience we happen to be living yet does not change our true nature at all so we need not get attached to the things, nor the technology that brought them to us.
