Amazon may be looking to reenter the world of wearables, but this time it may be with an AI-focused product. The company is buying a startup called Bee that makes a fitness tracker-like device that records your everyday conversations to automatically make to do list items, summarize your relationships, and set other reminders.
Bee’s co-founder, Maria de Lourdes Zollo, announced the deal in a LinkedIn post, before Amazon then confirmed the news clarifying the deal has not yet closed. It’s not clear how much Amazon paid to bring Bee in, but the company confirmed all Bee employees were offered roles at the larger company.
Why would Amazon want Bee? It’s likely looking to invest in the AI wearable space to go alongside its Amazon Echo speakers, Alexa assistant, and other AI projects. We’ve seen the introduction of different AI wearables over the last few years, such as the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pin, but none of them have proven to be a runaway success.
Bee’s competitive edge over those products is its price with its Pioneer device costing $49.99. However, to use it there is a subscription cost of $19 a month. Alongside the wearable, Bee has its own Apple Watch app that works in a similar way, but you don’t have to purchase a new device.
The wearable gives you “summaries, personal insights, and timely reminders” from listening to your conversations. The brand says, “Bee sits quietly in the background, learning your patterns, preferences and relationships over time, building a deeper understanding of your world without demanding your attention.”
Tech critics have found the Pioneer works in some scenarios, but it has also struggled in others. For example, in The Verge’s testing, they found the wearable couldn’t easily distinguish between TV shows and real life conversations making for confusing summaries. The original Bee device has proved popular enough that you can’t currently buy one until September.
The big question with Amazon’s purchase will be whether we’ll see changes to the company’s privacy stance. The company’s current policy confirms you can delete your data at any time and recordings are never stored.
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It also says it doesn’t use information from you to train AI models, and it doesn’t share anything with third parties. That may change when folded into Amazon, so those using the Pioneer already will likely be watching closely.
If Amazon does use Bee’s tech to launch its own product, it wouldn’t be the first time the company launched a wearable. Back in 2020, the brand tried a Fitbit-like product called the Halo, followed by the Halo View, before killing off its line of health trackers in 2023.
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About James Peckham
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