Amazon is expanding its lineup of AI gadgets that listen to everything you say with even more AI gadgets that listen to everything you say. Specifically, the company just announced two new devices under the brand Bee, which it acquired last year.
One, called the Bee Frontier, is similar to the original Bee device, a wearable with microphones that listens in constantly and then uses AI to generate transcripts and summaries based on what it hears or suggest actions in apps like Gmail. The difference this time around, though, is the inclusion of better audio-filtering AI, which should theoretically make it better at only logging information that’s important. According to Amazon, it should also be better at picking up your voice in loud environments—at a restaurant, for example. It’s also IP67-rated for water and splash resistance this time around and slightly smaller and lighter than the original.
The other new device, called the Bee Eclipse, is basically the same thing, but in a card-like form factor that attaches magnetically to the back of your phone.
Another new feature is—you guessed it—shopping. If you opt in to Amazon integration, your Bee wearable can now suggest items to buy right on your Amazon home page based on your conversations. A great feature if you felt like your targeted advertising wasn’t eerie enough already.
The Bee Frontier is out now for $74.99 and is available in onyx, lavender, and sage, and the Bee Eclipse will be available soon, starting at $99.99. Colors for that include silver, midnight, honey, and blush.
I should note here that while the Bee wearable’s whole selling point is based on using microphones to listen to everything you say and (tacitly) what people are saying to you, Amazon claims that nothing is ever stored; rather, it’s “processed into insights in real time” and then deleted afterward. There’s also a button that lights up to indicate when Bee is recording. Whether that’s enough to convince you that none of this is creepy is another matter entirely.
It looks as though an “always-on” approach to recording is something that tech companies are increasingly flirting with. I recently reviewed smart glasses from Xgimi that constantly listen to audio to provide another layer of “memory,” for example, and Meta has reportedly been interested in “hypersensing” smart glasses that record video constantly. On top of that, there are pendants and pins from other companies like Limitless, which record all the time to achieve a similar goal to the above gadgets. Even Apple announced an always-listening feature on its Apple Watch that lets you review transcripts from conversations, though it’s limited to only 15 seconds, and recordings aren’t stored.
Like those companies, Amazon seems to think people will be perfectly fine carrying around a gadget that is constantly listening in, though only time will tell how desensitized we are to what some would consider constant surveillance.
