Amazon has big hopes for wearable AI – starting with this $50 gadget

[NEW YORK] Months after Amazon.com acquired artificial intelligence (AI) hardware startup Bee, the company said it was working on making its $50 always-listening wearable more proactive, hinting that even bigger shakeups are on the way.

Bee's device, which can be worn on the wrist or clipped to a shirt, records and transcribes its owner's activities, uses that information to summarize conversations, and automatically creates to-do lists throughout the day in a companion app.

It has no display or built-in camera, and is designed as “ambient AI” hardware that fades into the background without requiring constant user interaction. The company says the small gadget's battery can last up to a week before needing to be recharged.

Early AI-powered devices like the Humane AI Pin and Rabbit R1 were a huge success due to issues like bugs, short battery life, and a lack of standout features that made them better than smartphones.

Amazon has been spotty when it comes to wearables, with less effort in the category compared to the company's dominant Fire TV, Kindle, and Echo hardware. The company will discontinue its Halo health tracker wristband in 2023 and hasn't released new wireless earbuds in nearly three years. The Halo device offered several features carried over by the Bee, including the ability to detect the speaker's mood.

Bee attempts to chart a different path than these gadgets by acting as a comprehensive daily report that requires no prompts or manual input. Startups such as Plaud are also releasing competing gadgets with similar goals.

While some are wary of the idea of ​​Amazon taking ownership of an always-on music accessory, the company said it maintains strict privacy practices.

“We have never stored audio recordings, and this remains the case,” the company wrote on its website after announcing the partnership with Amazon. It said “all audio recordings are processed in real time and deleted after processing” and are never saved or archived.

Since officially joining Amazon as a team of eight people in September, Bee has added features such as voice memos, which allow users to record ideas and thoughts with the push of a button, and daily insights to understand trends in “mood” and “changes in relationships,” the company announced Monday.

Co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zorro and her colleagues are also trying to make Bee more proactive. A recent “Actions” feature links the Assistant to your calendar and email, allowing Bee to draft emails and create meeting invitations.

“You can connect to Gmail and Calendar right from the app, and right from there we can take action on your behalf and basically follow up on the conversation,” Zorro told Bloomberg in an interview this week at the consumer technology conference CES in Las Vegas.

But Bee's days as an independent brand may be coming to an end. When asked if the product would be updated, Daniel Rausch, Amazon's vice president of Alexa and Echo, said: “Right now, it's definitely an Amazon device and service, and we're proud to have Bee in the family.” “Imagine what we're imagining, if you ask me. Stay tuned for that.”

Asked about a series of recent headlines detailing how some consumers are forming overly close bonds with AI agents, Rausch said, “I think it's just about being accountable,” referring to the company's obligations to its users.

“We've had a responsible AI team, a trust and privacy team for the 10 years we've been doing this,” he said. “I'm sure some of these topics are new to others, but frankly, people have been building close bonds, sharing details, telling Alexa things, asking for support from Alexa, and humor from Alexa literally ever since it was released.”

Rausch said the rise of generative AI and the launch of the more conversational Alexa+ assistant is the ideal time to take another step forward. And Amazon was impressed with what Zollo and his startup had created instead of starting from scratch. “We want to invent for our customers, and Maria and her team are great inventors,” Rausch said. “The passion is there, the purpose and focus is there, and this is a team with a mission to do something special.”

Unlike AI Pin and some new concepts shown at CES this week, the Bee hardware doesn't have a camera to help analyze and understand a customer's environment. “When we started Bee, our first prototype actually had a vision and a camera, but it was too expensive for a startup,” Zollo says. “I think there will be opportunities for other devices with cameras in the future.”

Like other companies in the industry, Zollo doesn't see AI wearables as a winner-take-all game. “It’s not just one device,” she said. “When I think about Bee, I don't think about the next wearable. That's all I think about. Overall, I think about how a device is configured to be worn during the day.”

She said it's important to adapt to a consumer's personal style in order to remain on the list of everyday accessories.

“I believe we will see more accessories worn by Bee in the future,” says Zollo. “We want to be with you, and we understand that you have your own fashion sense, so we want to understand what's good for you.”Bloomberg