Exclusive: Yieldstreet says some of its customers were affected by the Evolve Bank data breach

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illustration of money raining down

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

The alternative investment platform Yieldstreet is the latest company to reveal that its customers were affected by the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. 

On Tuesday, Yieldstreet spokesperson Clare Burrows confirmed to TechCrunch that “some Yieldstreet customer information may have been impacted” as a consequence of the Evolve breach. 

“We have communicated this to all potentially affected customers and continue to follow best practices regarding third-party cybersecurity incidents,” Burrows said in an email.

Burrows declined to say exactly what kind of customer information was stolen, nor how many customers were affected.

Last week, Evolve, which is a popular financial institution for fintech startups, announced that a cyberattack affected “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners’ customers.” 

As of this writing, the following companies have confirmed to TechCrunch that their customers were affected by the Evolve breach: Affirm, Branch, EarnIn, Marqeta, Melio, Mercury, Yieldstreet and Wise. 

Contact Us

Do you have more information about the Evolve breach and how it’s impacting partner companies? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

On Monday, Jason Mikula, a fintech reporter, wrote on X that Branch, an Evolve partner, notified customers that it was affected by the Evolve incident. 

A Branch spokesperson told TechCrunch on Tuesday that the company “continues to work with Evolve to understand the scope and the impact this incident may have on Branch account holders.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, we issued an email notification to account holders about the incident and urged them to exercise vigilance in monitoring account activity and protecting their account credentials. We also reassured them that the safety and security of the Branch platform and mobile application had not been compromised,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Mikula also reported that Juno, a crypto service company, and Yotta, a fintech company, were affected by the Evolve breach. In his newsletter Fintech Business Weekly, Mikula reported having reviewed stolen data from Evolve, which was posted online by the cybercrime gang LockBit. LockBit has claimed responsibility for the hack. According to the data, Mikula wrote, the following companies may have also been affected: Bitfinex, BrightSide, Copper Banking, Dave, Fund That Flip, Juno, Nomad, Rho and SoLo Funds. 

None of the above companies responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment, except for SoLo, Nomad, and Bitfinex. A SoLo spokesperson declined to comment. A Nomad spokesperson confirmed that it was affected by the Evolve breach, but also said that “it’s important to highlight that all Nomad accounts are secure and can continue to be used normally,” and that the company terminated its partnership with Evolve last year. A Bitfinex spokesperson said that the company’s “systems and data were not compromised in this incident.”

It’s likely that we still don’t know of several other companies. When reached by TechCrunch, Evolve spokesperson Eric Helvie declined to say how many of the bank’s partner companies or clients were affected by the breach. Instead, Helvie referred us to Evolve’s blog post regarding the incident.

This story has been updated to include comment from Nomad.

UPDATE, July 3 10:20 a.m. ET: This story has been updated to clarify that one of the companies that has been reported to have been affected by the Evolve breach is Copper Banking, and not Copper. The two are different companies, and a Copper spokesperson said that “no Copper data is processed by Evolve Bank, and as a result, no Copper data could potentially be impacted by a breach of Evolve Bank’s systems.” We regret the error.

UPDATE, July 3, 10:27 a.m. ET: This story was updated to include comment from Bitfinex.

Microsoft emails that warned customers of Russian hacks criticized for looking like spam and phishing

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Microsoft signage is being pictured in Warsaw, Poland, on June 26, 2024.

Image Credits: Aleksander Kalka/NurPhoto / Getty Images

In March, Microsoft confirmed that Russian government hackers known as Midnight Blizzard (or APT29) had broken into its systems with the goal of stealing various kinds of information, including data on Microsoft customers. 

Months later, Microsoft is still in the process of notifying its affected customers, and it looks like the process isn’t going very well, with experts criticizing Microsoft for sending emails that look like spam, or even phishing attempts. 

Kevin Beaumont, a former Microsoft employee and now a cybersecurity researcher who closely follows the company, has been warning companies to keep an eye out for these Microsoft emails. 

“Microsoft had a breach by Russia impacting customer data and didn’t follow the Microsoft 365 customer data breach process. The notifications aren’t in the portal, they emailed tenant admins instead.” Beaumont wrote on his LinkedIn account. “The emails can go into spam — and tenant admin accounts are supposed to be secure breakglass accounts without email. They also haven’t informed orgs via account managers. You want to check all emails going back to June. It is widespread.”

One of the main issues with Microsoft’s notification email is that it includes a “secure link” to a domain that bears no apparent connection to Microsoft. Instead, the email includes a link to: “purviewcustomer.powerappsportals.com.” 

“Basically, the critical alert looks like a phishing attack,” one person wrote on X.

That link has been submitted to urlscan.io, a site that can help spot malicious links, more than a hundred times. That suggests that there are a lot of organizations that saw that official legitimate Microsoft email and thought it was malicious.

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Do you have more information about this Microsoft incident? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

The urlscan.io submissions also suggest there are at least a hundred companies that were affected by the Russian government hack on Microsoft. U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA previously said that the Russian hackers also stole emails of several federal agencies. 

Apart from Beaumont’s warnings, there is some evidence that Microsoft customers are legitimately confused. In a Microsoft support portal, one customer shared the email their organization received in an attempt to get clarity on whether it was a genuine Microsoft email. 

“This email has several red flags for me, the request for the TenantID and essentially admin or high level email addresses, the powerapps page being barebones, and some quick Googling not finding anything related to the title of this email or it’s [sic] contents,” the person wrote. “Can anyone confirm this is a legit Microsoft email request?”

Commenting on Beaumont’s LinkedIn post, a cybersecurity consultant said that “several” of his clients received the email and “All of them were worried it was phishing.”

“At first glance, this did not inspire trust for the recipients, who started asking in forums or reaching out to Microsoft account managers to eventually confirm that the email was legitimate…weird way for a provider like this to communicate an important issue to potentially affected customers,” the consultant wrote. 

Microsoft spokespeople did not respond when TechCrunch asked how many organizations have been notified, or if the company plans to change the way it notifies affected customers. 

Cloud FinOps concept illustration with pink cloud in the middle surrounded by tools and dollar signs.

Archera helps customers access deep cloud discounts

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Cloud FinOps concept illustration with pink cloud in the middle surrounded by tools and dollar signs.

Image Credits: ArtemisDiana / Getty Images

Amid the generative AI boom, companies are spending a lot on cloud infrastructure — and they’re concerned about it. According to a 2024 survey from cloud cost monitoring platform CloudZero, less than half of companies think that they have “healthy” cloud costs, with 58% saying their costs are too high.

A number of public cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud and Azure, offer savings plans and reserved instances designed to incentivize companies to spend on infrastructure by passing along discounts. But unlocking these discounts requires committing to multi-year agreements, which not every customer is in a financial position to do.

Aran Khanna was an AI engineer at AWS when he realized that there might be a way around this.

Khanna is the CEO and co-founder of Archera, a startup that passes along savings from cloud providers’ discount plans but cuts the commitment term to as few as 30 days. It does this by “transforming” cloud providers’ savings plans and reserved instances — specifically AWS plans and reserved instances — into short-term, insured commitments and charging customers a fee when they save.

“We make money by customers opting in to use our insured commitments as part of their cloud purchasing strategy,” Khanna said. “We charge a variable premium per commitment based on the risk we are underwriting; this is our secret sauce developed over more than five years.”

While working at AWS (and, prior to that, Azure), Khanna struggled to get customers to buy long-term compute instance commitments. He even tried to get a commitment forgiveness program created at AWS, but it ultimately didn’t go anywhere, he says.

So Khanna teamed up with Nikhil Khanna, his younger brother, who previously worked in quantitative pricing at Uber and the investment management firm D.E. Shaw, to found Archera. Aran and Nikhil started the company in 2019 and spent the first three years developing an automated underwriting model before scaling up the business.

Archera
Archera provides visualizations and dashboards to show cloud usage and available discounts.
Image Credits: Archera

Today, in addition to insured commitments, Archera provides consulting services to help build purchasing strategies for customers to optimize their cloud usage. From a dashboard, companies can customize commitment plans, including or excluding infrastructure and setting policies to trigger renewals and purchases automatically.

Aran claims that Archera’s offerings comply with “all service provider rules and guidelines” and that the company “works closely” with public cloud providers.

“For smaller organizations, Archera may serve as the primary cost optimization tool due to its low-investment, high-return model,” Aran said. “In larger organizations, Archera often functions as a secondary tool within the broader cloud cost management strategy, enhancing overall efficiency and savings.”

Archera, which has around 400 customers, is making $7 million in annual revenue and anticipates that number more than doubling this year. The startup has been “net profitable” since mid-2023, according to Aran; now it’s gearing up for a major expansion.

Archera on Thursday announced that it raised $17 million in a Series B funding round led by Highsage Ventures with participation from Ridge Ventures, Amplify Partners and PSL Ventures, bringing the company’s total raised to $27.5 million. Aran wouldn’t give Archera’s post-money valuation but said that the startup was valued in the “hundreds of millions” of dollars pre-money.

Coinciding with the fundraising, Archera is firming up a relationship with insurance provider Relm to access reinsurance and lending capacity of just over $100 million, which Aran says will support the creation of new insurance-backed solutions.

“The new funding will enable Archera to offer additional cloud financing and commitment insurance products,” Aran said. “These upcoming products require partnerships with lending and reinsurance providers, who require Archera to have a stronger balance sheet to engage effectively. Raising funds now ensures that Archera can meet these requirements and launch their innovative products successfully.”

Aran says that Archera will put its new cash and credit toward products that support Azure and Google Cloud in addition to AWS (including multi-cloud products), growing its 22-person Bellevue, Washington-based workforce and expanding its financial reporting services for enterprise clients.

“We’ve grown our development organization twofold, and are announcing the general availability of multi-cloud support this month, starting with the release of cost management and insured commitments for Azure,” Aran said. “Additionally, we plan to launch insured commitments for Google Cloud later this year, along with new, in-the-works commitment insurance and financing products.”

Asked about competition in the cloud cost management space, also known as FinOps, Aran said that he thinks Archera is well-positioned to head off rivals. He acknowledged that a number of firms, including Big Tech companies, provide tools to help manage cloud costs. But he asserted that they can’t beat the savings Archera delivers.

“Despite the broader slowdown in the tech industry, Archera has experienced increased interest due to the global shift towards efficiency,” Aran said. “This strategic positioning creates a substantial moat against upstarts and other competitors in the cloud cost management space, ensuring that we are well-prepared to weather potential headwinds.”

illustration of money raining down

Exclusive: Yieldstreet says some of its customers were affected by the Evolve Bank data breach

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illustration of money raining down

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

The alternative investment platform Yieldstreet is the latest company to reveal that its customers were affected by the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. 

On Tuesday, Yieldstreet spokesperson Clare Burrows confirmed to TechCrunch that “some Yieldstreet customer information may have been impacted” as a consequence of the Evolve breach. 

“We have communicated this to all potentially affected customers and continue to follow best practices regarding third-party cybersecurity incidents,” Burrows said in an email.

Burrows declined to say exactly what kind of customer information was stolen, nor how many customers were affected.

Last week, Evolve, which is a popular financial institution for fintech startups, announced that a cyberattack affected “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners’ customers.” 

As of this writing, the following companies have confirmed to TechCrunch that their customers were affected by the Evolve breach: Affirm, Branch, EarnIn, Marqeta, Melio, Mercury, Yieldstreet and Wise. 

Contact Us

Do you have more information about the Evolve breach and how it’s impacting partner companies? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

On Monday, Jason Mikula, a fintech reporter, wrote on X that Branch, an Evolve partner, notified customers that it was affected by the Evolve incident. 

A Branch spokesperson told TechCrunch on Tuesday that the company “continues to work with Evolve to understand the scope and the impact this incident may have on Branch account holders.”

“Out of an abundance of caution, we issued an email notification to account holders about the incident and urged them to exercise vigilance in monitoring account activity and protecting their account credentials. We also reassured them that the safety and security of the Branch platform and mobile application had not been compromised,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Mikula also reported that Juno, a crypto service company, and Yotta, a fintech company, were affected by the Evolve breach. In his newsletter Fintech Business Weekly, Mikula reported having reviewed stolen data from Evolve, which was posted online by the cybercrime gang LockBit. LockBit has claimed responsibility for the hack. According to the data, Mikula wrote, the following companies may have also been affected: Bitfinex, BrightSide, Copper, Dave, Fund That Flip, Juno, Nomad, Rho and SoLo Funds. 

None of the above companies responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment, except for SoLo and Nomad. A SoLo spokesperson declined to comment. A Nomad spokesperson confirmed that it was affected by the Evolve breach, but also said that “it’s important to highlight that all Nomad accounts are secure and can continue to be used normally,” and that the company terminated its partnership with Evolve last year.

It’s likely that we still don’t know of several other companies. When reached by TechCrunch, Evolve spokesperson Eric Helvie declined to say how many of the bank’s partner companies or clients were affected by the breach. Instead, Helvie referred us to Evolve’s blog post regarding the incident.

This story has been updated to include comment from Nomad.

Fintech company Wise says some customers affected by Evolve Bank data breach

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A laptop keyboard and Wise on App Store displayed on a phone screen.

Image Credits: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images

The money transfer and fintech company Wise announced on Friday that some of its customers’ personal data may have been stolen in the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust. 

The news highlights that the fallout from the Evolve data breach on third-party companies — and their customers and users —  is still unclear, and it’s likely that it includes companies and startups that are yet unknown. 

In a statement published on its official website, Wise wrote that the company worked with Evolve from 2020 until 2023 “to provide USD account details.” And given that Evolve was breached recently, “some Wise customers’ personal information may have been involved.”

“We’ll be emailing all Wise customers who we think may have been affected by this data breach directly,” the company wrote.

Wise said that it shared U.S. customers’ personal data with Evolve, information that included names, addresses, date of birth, contact details and Social Security numbers or Employer Identification Number. For non-U.S. customers, Wise also shared “another identity document number.” 

At this point, it’s unclear how many Wise customers have been affected, as the company wrote that it is still “actively investigating.” 

Contact Us

Do you have more information about the Evolve breach, and how it’s affecting other companies? From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

A Wise spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company is still investigating, and that it is “contacting customers who may have been affected by this breach directly.”

“Wise’s systems were not compromised and our customers are able to access their accounts safely,” the spokesperson said in an email.

When reached by TechCrunch for comment, asking whether Evolve knows how many partner companies — old and current — and end users have been affected by the breach, and whether Evolve has already contacted all of them, Evolve spokesperson Eric Helvie declined to comment and referred to the company’s official statement on its website.

As of this writing, the statement says Evolve “continues to work around the clock to respond to the recent cybersecurity incident” and promises to provide further updates. The company said the breach was a ransomware attack by the LockBit cybercrime gang, due to an employee clicking on a malicious link in May of this year. 

“There is no evidence that the criminals accessed any customer funds, but it appears they did access and download customer information from our databases and a file share during periods in February and May,” the statement read. “The threat actor also encrypted some data within our environment. However, we have backups available and experienced limited data loss and impact on our operations.”

The company also promises to directly notify “each individual whose personal information was affected.”

So far, Affirm, EarnIn, Marqeta, Melio and Mercury — all Evolve partners — have acknowledged that they are investigating how the Evolve breach impacted their customers. On Monday, fintech reporter Jason Mikula shared on X a notification that Branch, another Evolve partner, had sent to a customer. Branch has yet to respond to repeated requests for comment from TechCrunch.

This story was updated to include Wise’s spokesperson statement.

Decagon claims its customers service bots are smarter than average

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A chat bot looking out of a smart phone with various conversation bubbles around the phone.

Image Credits: Malorny / Getty Images

One red-hot category in the generative AI space is customer support, which isn’t surprising, really, when you consider the tech’s potential to cut contact center costs while increasing scale. Critics argue that generative AI-powered customer support tech could depress wages, lead to layoffs and ultimately deliver a more error-prone end-user experience. Proponents, on the other hand, say that generative AI will augment — not replace — workers, while enabling them to focus on more meaningful tasks.

Jesse Zhang is in the proponents camp. Of course, he’s a little biased. Along with Ashwin Sreenivas, Zhang co-founded Decagon, a generative AI platform to automate various aspects of customer support channels.

Zhang is well aware of how stiff the competition is in the market for AI-powered customer support, which spans not only tech giants like Google and Amazon but startups such as Parloa, Retell AI and Cognigy (which recently raised $100 million). By one estimate, the sector could be worth $2.89 billion by 2032, up from $308.4 million in 2022.

But Zhang thinks that both Decagon’s engineering expertise and go-to-market approach give it an advantage. “When we first started, the prevailing advice we received was to not pursue the customer support space, because it was too crowded,” Zhang told TechCrunch. “Ultimately, the thing that worked for us was to aggressively prioritize what customers wanted and maintain laser focus on what customers would get value from. That’s the difference between a real business and a flashy AI demo.”

Both Zhang and Sreenivas have technical backgrounds, having worked at both startups and larger tech orgs. Zhang was a software engineer at Google before becoming a trader at Citadel, the market-making firm, and founding Lowkey, a social gaming platform that was acquired by Pokémon Go maker Niantic in 2021. Sreenivas was a deployment strategist at Palantir before co-founding computer vision startup Helia, which he sold to unicorn Scale AI in 2020.

Decagon, which sells primarily to enterprises and “high-growth” startups, develops what amount to customer support chatbots. The bots, driven by first- and third-party AI models, are fine-tunable, capable of ingesting a businesses’ knowledge bases and historical customer conversations to gain greater contextual understanding of issues.

“As we started building, we realized that ‘human-like bots’ entails a lot, since human agents are capable of complex reasoning, taking actions and analyzing conversations after the fact,” Zhang said. “From talking to customers, it’s clear that while everyone wants greater operational efficiency, it cannot come at the expense of customer experience — no one likes chatbots.”

Decagon
Decagon taps generative AI tech to respond to customer questions — and more. Image Credits: Decagon
Image Credits: Decagon

So how aren’t Decagon’s bots like traditional chatbots? Well, Zhang says they learn from past conversations and feedback. Perhaps more importantly, they can integrate with other apps to take actions on behalf of the customer or agent, like processing a refund, categorizing an incoming message or helping write a support article.

On the back end, companies get analytics and control over Decagon’s bots and their conversations.

“Human agents are able to analyze conversations to notice trends and find improvements,” Zhang said. “Our AI-powered analytics dashboard automatically reviews and tags customer conversations to identify themes, flag anomalies and suggest additions to their knowledge base to better address customer inquiries.”

Now, generative AI has a reputation for being, well, less than perfect — and, in some cases, ethically compromised. What would Zhang say to companies wary that Decagon’s bots will tell someone to eat glue or write an article full of plagiarized content, or that Decagon will train its in-house models on their data?

Basically, he says, don’t worry. “Providing customers with the necessary guardrails and monitoring for their AI agents has been important,” he said. “We optimize our models for our customers, but we do this in a way which ensures that it is impossible for any data to be inadvertently exposed to another customer. For instance, a model that generates an answer for customer A would never have any exposure to data from customer B.”

Decagon’s tech — while subject to the same limitations as every other generative AI-powered app out there — has been attracting name-brand clients as of late, like Eventbrite, Bilt and Substack, helping Decagon to reach break-even. Notable investors have climbed aboard the venture, too, including Box CEO Aaron Levie, Airtable CEO Howie Liu and Lattice CEO Jack Altman.

To date, Decagon has raised $35 million across seed and Series A rounds that had participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel (which led the Series A), A* and entrepreneur Elad Gil. Zhang says that the cash is being put toward product development and expanding Decagon’s San Francisco-based workforce.

“A key challenge is that customers equate AI agents to previous generation chatbots, which don’t actually get the job done,” Zhang said. “The customer support market is saturated with older chatbots, which have eroded lost consumer trust. New solutions from this generation must cut through the noise of the incumbents.”

amazon fashion ai customer fit

Amazon turns to AI to help customers find clothes that fit when shopping online

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amazon fashion ai customer fit

Image Credits: Amazon

After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, e-commerce giant Amazon today shared how it’s now using AI technology to help customers shop for apparel online. The company explains it’s now using large language models, generative AI and machine learning to power four AI-powered features that will help customers find clothing that fits — an ongoing challenge when shopping online and the leading cause for apparel returns.

According to a study by Coresight Research, the average return rate for clothing ordered online is 24.4%, which is eight percentage points higher than the overall online return rate. In addition, retailers and brands said online returns had grown over the past two years. Often, that’s in part because today’s consumers will buy an item in multiple sizes or colors and then return those that don’t work out, as the process of home try-ons and shipping items back has become easier.

To address this challenge, Amazon has introduced AI into the online shopping experience in four ways: in personalized size recommendations, a “Fit Insights” tool for sellers, AI-powered highlights from fit reviews left by other customers and reimagined size charts.

With the personalized size recommendations, Amazon Fashion used AI to develop a deep learning algorithm that will help customers find their best-fitting size across a variety of styles.

This system works by considering the size relationship between brands’ size systems, the product’s reviews and the customer’s own fit preferences. The information is combined in real-time to make suggestions of the best-fitting size for a customer and adapts as the customer’s size needs change. The company also uses AI to help them discover the styles that fit them best. However, this feature can be imperfect if a family member regularly shops for another — like their teen son or daughter — as it confuses the system as to what size the customer is versus the child. (Amazon says this would not occur if the customer was browsing a children’s department versus an adult’s; it also notes that customers can create separate profiles for fit preferences through the “find your size” feature.)

Image Credits: Amazon

Another new feature, “Fit Review Highlights,” could help combat that problem, however. This feature is an extension of the newly added AI-generated Customer Review Highlights introduced in August 2023, which provide a short paragraph summary that details the customer sentiment and product features, as well as provides key product attributes as clickable buttons.

Image Credits: Amazon

With the Fit Review Highlights, Amazon extracts information about the apparel’s fit from the customer reviews, including things like size accuracy, garment fit on specific body areas and fabric stretch. Large language models extract details from the customer reviews and then AI summarizes the findings into an easy-to-read highlight personalized to the user, Amazon explains. This could help save users time as they wouldn’t have to read through hundreds of reviews to get a sense of the item’s fit.

The retailer is also now leveraging AI to improve size charts across the site. With large language models, Amazon Fashion is extracting and cleaning product size charts from multiple sources and then transforming the data into standardized sizes. This process will remove duplicate information and auto-correct missing or incorrect measurements, leading to more accurate charts — and therefore, fit.

Image Credits: Amazon

Sellers, too, will gain access to AI-powered insights. With a Fit Insights Tool from Amazon Fashion, sellers are provided with an understanding of a customer’s fit needs so they can improve how they communicate sizing to customers — e.g. “true to size,” or if an item runs smaller or larger, for instance.

This information can also be used to guide their future manufacturing efforts, Amazon notes. In this case, large language models are used to extract and aggregate customer feedback on fit, style and fabric in addition to returns, size chart analyses and customer reviews. Machine learning is also used to identify errors in the brand’s size charts, if any.

Image Credits: Amazon

These features are only a handful of AI advances that Amazon has employed AI to improve the shopping experience on its site in recent months. Beyond the customer review highlights, Amazon also debuted generative AI tools to help sellers write their product descriptions and enhance their product images. The latter could boost click-through rates by 40%, the retailer estimated at the time. Outside of Amazon Web Services, the company also brought AI to other consumer products, including Alexa and Fire TV.

amazon fashion ai customer fit

Amazon turns to AI to help customers find clothes that fit when shopping online

by with No Comment Tech

amazon fashion ai customer fit

Image Credits: Amazon

After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, e-commerce giant Amazon today shared how it’s now using AI technology to help customers shop for apparel online. The company explains it’s now using large language models, generative AI and machine learning to power four AI-powered features that will help customers find clothing that fits — an ongoing challenge when shopping online and the leading cause for apparel returns.

According to a study by Coresight Research, the average return rate for clothing ordered online is 24.4%, which is eight percentage points higher than the overall online return rate. In addition, retailers and brands said online returns had grown over the past two years. Often, that’s in part because today’s consumers will buy an item in multiple sizes or colors and then return those that don’t work out, as the process of home try-ons and shipping items back has become easier.

To address this challenge, Amazon has introduced AI into the online shopping experience in four ways: in personalized size recommendations, a “Fit Insights” tool for sellers, AI-powered highlights from fit reviews left by other customers and reimagined size charts.

With the personalized size recommendations, Amazon Fashion used AI to develop a deep learning algorithm that will help customers find their best-fitting size across a variety of styles.

This system works by considering the size relationship between brands’ size systems, the product’s reviews and the customer’s own fit preferences. The information is combined in real-time to make suggestions of the best-fitting size for a customer and adapts as the customer’s size needs change. The company also uses AI to help them discover the styles that fit them best. However, this feature can be imperfect if a family member regularly shops for another — like their teen son or daughter — as it confuses the system as to what size the customer is versus the child. (Amazon says this would not occur if the customer was browsing a children’s department versus an adult’s; it also notes that customers can create separate profiles for fit preferences through the “find your size” feature.)

Image Credits: Amazon

Another new feature, “Fit Review Highlights,” could help combat that problem, however. This feature is an extension of the newly added AI-generated Customer Review Highlights introduced in August 2023, which provide a short paragraph summary that details the customer sentiment and product features, as well as provides key product attributes as clickable buttons.

Image Credits: Amazon

With the Fit Review Highlights, Amazon extracts information about the apparel’s fit from the customer reviews, including things like size accuracy, garment fit on specific body areas and fabric stretch. Large language models extract details from the customer reviews and then AI summarizes the findings into an easy-to-read highlight personalized to the user, Amazon explains. This could help save users time as they wouldn’t have to read through hundreds of reviews to get a sense of the item’s fit.

The retailer is also now leveraging AI to improve size charts across the site. With large language models, Amazon Fashion is extracting and cleaning product size charts from multiple sources and then transforming the data into standardized sizes. This process will remove duplicate information and auto-correct missing or incorrect measurements, leading to more accurate charts — and therefore, fit.

Image Credits: Amazon

Sellers, too, will gain access to AI-powered insights. With a Fit Insights Tool from Amazon Fashion, sellers are provided with an understanding of a customer’s fit needs so they can improve how they communicate sizing to customers — e.g. “true to size,” or if an item runs smaller or larger, for instance.

This information can also be used to guide their future manufacturing efforts, Amazon notes. In this case, large language models are used to extract and aggregate customer feedback on fit, style and fabric in addition to returns, size chart analyses and customer reviews. Machine learning is also used to identify errors in the brand’s size charts, if any.

Image Credits: Amazon

These features are only a handful of AI advances that Amazon has employed AI to improve the shopping experience on its site in recent months. Beyond the customer review highlights, Amazon also debuted generative AI tools to help sellers write their product descriptions and enhance their product images. The latter could boost click-through rates by 40%, the retailer estimated at the time. Outside of Amazon Web Services, the company also brought AI to other consumer products, including Alexa and Fire TV.

The SLING TV display booth at the 2017 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 7, 2017.

Sling TV now lets customers play free arcade games while watching live TV content

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The SLING TV display booth at the 2017 Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada on January 7, 2017.

Image Credits: FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP / Getty Images

DISH-owned streaming service Sling TV announced today the launch of its new gaming platform called “Arcade,” featuring classic arcade games like Tetris, Wheel of Fortune, Sweet Sugar, Solitaire Clash, Poker Online and Doodle Jump, among others.

Notably, the experience is free for Sling TV and Sling Freestream customers, and they can play games on a split-screen while simultaneously watching live TV content — providing entertainment during commercial breaks. Sling TV also allows users to expand to full screen to have a more immersive playing experience. Meanwhile, Netflix’s and YouTube’s gaming offerings are only for paid subscribers.

Sling TV says that 10 games will be available at launch. New titles are to be added every few months, including Astroids and other titles, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch. Sling will also introduce new games before big events like football season.

The current game selection is thanks to Sling’s partnership with Play.Works, a connected-TV games provider that distributes games on more than 200 million televisions, and has teamed up with various major TV companies like Comcast, Cox, Samsung, Vizio and more. Sling didn’t say if it would partner with other gaming companies to expand its gaming library, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it did. There’s also a possibility that Sling acquires independent studios and developers. When Netflix launched games in 2021, the streaming giant went on a buying spree as part of its gaming push, acquiring six companies to help build out its collection of titles.

“We are exploring all possibilities to bring our customers the broadest game catalog and the best gaming experience possible,” the spokesperson told us.

Arcade is currently only on Amazon Fire TV and Android TV. Sling is adding support for more devices in the next month, including most smart TVs. However, the spokesperson said the company couldn’t share a specific date for when it’ll be available for Apple TV and Roku.

In recent years, Sling has struggled to keep subscribers, but Arcade could set the streamer apart from competitors as it offers unique and interactive entertainment for users. Dish, which recently merged with EchoStar, reported a loss of 65,000 Sling TV subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2023, bringing the total to 2.06 million. It lost 77,000 subs in the same period a year prior.

“Sling is now more than just TV,” Gary Schanman, group president of DISH Video Services, said in an official statement. “We want people to enjoy their entertainment just as much as we do. The new Arcade offering combines some great classic games with our great TV programming. No other streaming platform gives you access to more entertainment options for free.”

Updated 3/7/24 at 12:10 p.m. ET with comments from the company.

a set of white asterisks of different fonts symbolizing passwords on a green background

US government urges Sisense customers to reset credentials after hack

by with No Comment Tech

a set of white asterisks of different fonts symbolizing passwords on a green background

Image Credits: Getty Images

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA is warning Sisense customers to reset their credentials and secrets after the data analytics company reported a security incident.

In a brief statement on Thursday, CISA said it was responding to a “recent compromise” at Sisense, which provides business intelligence and data analytics to companies around the world.

CISA urged Sisense customers to “reset credentials and secrets potentially exposed to, or used to access, Sisense services,” and report to the agency any suspicious activity involving the use of compromised credentials.

The exact nature of the cybersecurity incident is not clear yet.

Founded in 2004, Sisense develops business intelligence and data analytics software for big companies, including telcos, airlines and tech giants. Sisense’s technology allows organizations to collect, analyze and visualize large amounts of their corporate data by tapping directly into their existing technologies and cloud systems.

Companies like Sisense rely on using credentials, such as passwords and private keys, to access a customer’s various stores of data for analysis. With access to these credentials, an attacker could potentially also access a customer’s data.

CISA said it is “taking an active role in collaborating with private industry partners to respond to this incident, especially as it relates to impacted critical infrastructure sector organizations.”

Sisense counts Air Canada, PagerDuty, Philips Healthcare, Skullcandy and Verizon as its customers, as well as thousands of other organizations globally.

News of the incident first emerged on Wednesday after cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs published a note sent by Sisense Chief Information Security Officer Sangram Dash urging customers to “rotate any credentials that you use within your Sisense application.”

Neither Dash nor a spokesperson for Sisense responded to an email seeking comment.

Israeli media reported in January that Sisense had laid off about half of its employees since 2022. It is unclear if the layoffs impacted the company’s security posture. Sisense has taken in close to $300 million in funding from investors, which include Insight Partners, Bessemer Ventures Partners and Battery Ventures.

Do you know more about the Sisense breach? To contact this reporter, get in touch on Signal and WhatsApp at +1 646-755-8849, or by email. You can also send files and documents via SecureDrop.