Amazon wants to take a step forward to position itself as a fashion retailer and artificial intelligence is going to help it. The company has just introduced a new app that will help you find clothes to buy. The app, called StyleSnap, is a kind of fashion Shazam that integrates with Amazon's website.

Like the song identification app, StyleSnap identifies pieces of clothing from a photo and displays it directly in the store where it can be purchased with just one click.

To do this, users simply take a photo of a piece of clothing or upload the image, and the app will rely on machine learning to match the look of that photo and find similar items for sale on Amazon. com.

The user has to click on the camera icon in the upper right corner of the Amazon application and select the option “StyleSnap”; then simply upload a photo or screenshot of a fashion look, and the system will present recommendations for similar items on Amazon that match the look of the photo. In making recommendations, StyleSnap will take into account a number of factors such as brand, price range, and customer reviews.

Amazon has unveiled this app at the company's Re: MARS conference in Las Vegas. As they explain, StyleSnap relies on computer vision and deep learning to identify clothing items in a photo. The deep learning technology also helps classify the clothing items in the image into categories such as “slim and elegant dresses” or “flannel shirts”.

Amazon already tried to position itself as a fashion benchmark in 2017, with the introduction of the Echo Look, an AI-powered camera that offered users fashion recommendations, although the system made a lot of mistakes and repeated recommendations. Other fashion companies such as Asos, on the other hand, offer services similar to the one Amazon has presented.

However, the launch of StyleSnap shows that Amazon doesn't want to give up the fashion business so easily, and that they think their AI expertise will give them an edge over the competition.