Amazon's Bee Launches Two New Personal AI Devices, Starting at $75
Amazon's personal AI wearable maker, Bee, is unveiling its first new products since being acquired by the retail giant last year. The company on Thursday introduced the Bee Frontier, the next generation of its device that can be worn on the wrist or pinned to clothing, alongside the Bee Eclipse, a credit-card-sized device that magnetically attaches to the back of your smartphone.
The Eclipse positions Bee in more direct competition with AI devices like the Plaud Note and Pocket, but at a lower price point โ the Bee Frontier is $74.99, compared with $159 for the Plaud Note (or $189 for the Note Pro), or $129 for the Pocket AI device.
Colors and Pricing
The Bee Frontier is available in Onyx, Lavender, and Sage, while the $99.99 Bee Eclipse comes in Silver, Midnight, Honey, and Blush.
What the Devices Do
Like the original Bee, the new devices leverage AI to take notes from your everyday conversations, helping you remember important details and turn them into actionable to-dos, summaries, and insights.
For instance, if you discussed making plans with friends, Bee would remember the date and time you agreed on, then create a calendar invite. You could also use Bee to take lecture notes in class or jot down the care plan you discussed with a doctor, among other use cases.
Subscription Tiers and Features
All Bee devices can create conversation summaries and recaps for free, and offer 14 days of memory. With an $11.99 per month Bee Pro subscription, users receive unlimited conversation summaries and integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa+, and third-party applications. Pro users also get suggested to-dos, daily memories, a personal chat assistant, and conversation templates.
Privacy by Design
To make all this possible, Bee devices use a private computing security architecture that doesn't store the raw audio from your conversations. Instead, audio is processed in real time and then deleted. Transcripts of the conversation are encrypted using keys that your device creates and controls, which means no one else โ including Amazon employees โ can access those files unless you manually and intentionally share them.
Additionally, you can opt to connect Bee to Alexa, allowing your Echo device to use its Voice ID feature to recognize when you're speaking. It can then record your conversations to provide Bee's insights. This aspect of Bee is optional, and Amazon notes you can delete transcripts and summaries at any time.
Integrations and Ecosystem
With its new connections to Amazon.com and Alexa, Bee users can make purchases from Amazon or ask Alexa for their Bee insights, summaries, or to-dos hands-free.
Bee also works with your existing productivity software, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook, so it can draft emails, set up meetings, surface action items, and more.
Plus, you can upload photos to Bee or connect it with Apple's HealthKit to add a picture of your overall wellness to be integrated into your provided insights.
Hardware Details
The Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse both feature a single button that turns the device off and on, along with an indicator light when it's summarizing a conversation. The Frontier also offers IP67 water resistance, up to seven days of battery life, USB-C charging, and dual microphones with advanced noise filtering.
All Bee devices come with a companion mobile app, which has also been newly redesigned, plus a new desktop...
via TechCrunch AI