Amazon buys Bee: AI startup that records everything you say
Amazon has announced the acquisition of the American startup Bee, which has developed a compact AI gadget in the form of a bracelet or foam that can passively record conversations and create summaries, reminders, and tips using its proprietary app.
How Bee works
- The gadget costs about $49.99 with a subscription of $19 per month.
- It works as a voice assistant, transforming conversations into text and then generating summaries, tasks, and tips.
- It works for 7 days without recharging, has a "mute" button, but without a permanent recording indicator (to save battery).
- Interaction is via phone: viewing notes, summaries, integration with calendar, contacts, photos, etc.
Why Amazon is buying it
Renewed interest in wearable AI devices - Amazon used to have Halo, but it closed in 2023. The issue of targeted advertising is a very important problem for any sales. Usually, you have to pay for millions of impressions to attract only a small percentage of the audience. Personal assistants can be quite accurate in forming a user's profile, so Amazon wants to achieve unprecedented accuracy in displaying ads and creating personalised discounts. However, it is still unclear how the company is going to get people interested in using this exclusively advertising gadget.
Security and privacy issues
- Bee claims that audio files are not stored, only processed in real time in the cloud.
- Amazon assures that it will maintain privacy policies and add more control settings for users.
- Bee is also working on a mode of processing exclusively locally on the smartphone to completely avoid data transfer risks, but it is unclear whether Amazon will continue with these developments.
- Bee has also been working on a restriction feature, based on certain topics or geolocation, which would be ignored by the device.
What does this mean for users?
While Bee was an independent small startup, it was a really convenient way to not forget an important conversation or meeting, or to not lose the main point in a long and boring meeting. Now, users can only be interested in changing uninteresting ads to more targeted ones that match their interests.
Amazon is systematically expanding its line of digital assistants: Echo and Alexa are joined by Bee. However, the company is known for its not-so-correct attitude to user privacy. In 2022, it became known that law enforcement officers could access Amazon Ring surveillance cameras even without the owner of such a camera.
It is also worth mentioning that most AI companies are working on physical devices. In addition to Meta glasses, rumours are circulating online about a mysterious device created by Jony Ive for OpenAI.