The Battle Against Counterfeits Has a New Weapon

When Olivia Matthaei, a consignment store sales clerk, needs to check whether a designer handbag is authentic, she knows the drill. She grabs a custom camera with a microscope lens provided by Entrupy, a New York-based artificial-intelligence startup. The shape of a bulky battery pack, it pops onto an iPhone or iPod. She opens the Entrupy app and selects a brand from a list. It normally takes a user three to five minutes to go through the authentication process, but she is faster because the store, Opulent Habits, in Madison, N.J., has been using the app since 2018.