Klarna's AI Helps You Buy Things in Photographs
Popular online payments service Klarna is tapping AI to let us "snap, search, and shop" for items identified in a photograph.
This new feature of the Klarna app is called "Shopping lens," and it allows users to take a photo of the objects and styles around them. Klarna's AI then identifies what those objects are and where they can be bought, with the AI able to identify more than 10 million items and present price comparisons, reviews, and retailers with stock available.
Klarna will also take into account the style of the item(s) in the photo and show similar items that match if possible. To prevent privacy issues, no faces or bodies can appear in the photos Klarna uses.
As Reuters reports, such a feature was always going to be compared to Google Lens. However, Klarna's Chief Marketing Officer, David Sandström, is keen to point out the differences, "The thing that differentiates us from Google is that our lens is purposefully built for shopping ... we do not want people to take images of random things, but rather only products they want to buy."
The types of object Klarna's AI can recognize include the popular categories of clothes, home decor, and of course, electronics. Anyone located in the US, UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, or Norway with the Klarna app installed can try this new feature out right now.
Alongside this, Klarna is rolling out a barcode scanner to allow consumers to access detailed information on products while they are in-store shopping. Retailers will not be pleased to hear that information includes price comparisons and variations of the product that can be purchased online instead.
The online shopping space is certainly becoming crowded, with TikTok launching its own low-cost shopping experience to
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