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Amazon has quietly acquired wearable AI startup Bee, signaling a recent push into customized, voice-enabled expertise amid rising scrutiny over information privateness. The deal marks Amazon’s reentry into the wearable AI market, following its determination in 2023 to discontinue Halo, a fitness-oriented machine, as a part of the tech big’s broader cost-reduction efforts. Amazon’s present Echo product line contains good glasses that combine with Alexa, the corporate’s digital assistant.
“When we started Bee, we imagined a world where AI is truly personal, where your life is understood and enhanced by technology that learns with you,” Bee co-founder Maria de Lourdes Zollo wrote in a LinkedIn submit. “What began as a dream with an incredible team and community now finds a new home at Amazon.”
Bee workers have reportedly obtained provides to work at Amazon. However, the corporate has not disclosed what number of workforce members are anticipated to make the transition.
Bee pricing and key options
Founded in 2022, the San Francisco-based startup sells an AI-powered wristband that resembles a smartwatch. The machine is priced at $49.99 and requires a $19 month-to-month subscription. The wearable options embedded microphones and AI able to listening to conversations and producing summaries, reminders, and lists based mostly on what it hears.
Privacy considerations with merchandise that file every thing
Wearables like Bee, which passively monitor speech, increase considerations about information safety and surveillance. As famous each by CNBC and TechCrunch, expertise companies range in how they handle and retailer voice information, notably relating to whether or not recordings are retained for AI coaching.
Bee’s printed privateness insurance policies state that customers could delete their information at any time, and that audio recordings usually are not saved, saved, or used to coach its AI techniques. However, because the app features as a private assistant, it processes and retains sure person inputs to offer contextual help.
Previously, Bee indicated that solely individuals who have consented can have their voices recorded, based on TechCrunch. The firm has reportedly been engaged on a characteristic that may let customers set parameters to present them extra management over the machine’s recording conduct.
Plans have been additionally below option to shift AI processing from the cloud to the machine itself, which would scale back potential privateness dangers by limiting the switch of delicate information on-line. Whether these privacy-focused developments will proceed below Amazon’s possession stays unsure.
Explore how Amazon’s newest AI-driven workforce technique is reshaping jobs throughout the tech business. Read our full protection on Amazon’s AI-related job cuts and what’s subsequent for human employees.
