Want an expensive fridge that can tell you when food has expired, reorder items when you’re running out, and learn all your purchasing habits? Of course you fucking don’t.
Why would you? It’s absolutely pointless. You know how you can tell if food has expired? Look at the food. Does it look and/or smell expired? Congratulations, you have determined if it’s expired. Same goes for low-stock items. How many eggs you got in your totally adequate fridge right now? Less than four? Maybe you should buy some more goddamn eggs, then. Or don’t! It’s totally up to you. We don’t give a rat’s ass. But Amazon does.
Amazon is building a smart fridge to do all that and more, apparently. And by “more,” we mean developing another insidiously well-branded, nihilistic ploy to harvest every iota of data from your existence to further its gradual replacement of public services, financial institutions, and overall home life.
So yeah. Expect to roll your eyes at Refrigerator Prime, Prime Fridge, Chill Alexa, or whatever the hell Amazon will call the thing when it rolls out in the near future for that coveted market demographic of homeowners looking for appliances one step removed from ICE agents.
Based on its ‘walk-out’ store tech —
According to the exclusive report from Business Insider, Amazon has been tinkering with some kind of Alexa Fridge for a few years now “using some of the computer-vision technology found in Amazon Go cashierless stores.” In theory, the system will be able to scan and read objects stored in the fridge, determining expiration dates and monitoring item weights for restocking and reordering potential. The fridge is rumored to also feature relatively predictable additions like recipe suggestions based on what you’ve got inside its ever-watchful bowels.
A pricey departure from other products —
Of course, something this over-the-top and unnecessary will come with an equally ridiculous price tag, notes Insider. No estimates are given, but it’s easy to see “Project Pulse” (yes, that’s legitimately the internal codename) falling within the mid-five figures right out of the gate.
Such an exclusively high-end sell will be somewhat of a departure for Amazon, which has marketed itself on relative affordability for years. Like most upper-tier tech releases, however, internal sources relayed that they expect the price point to drop over time as the technology becomes more refined and cheaper to produce. Can’t wait.
