Amazon's Bee Wearables Gain Alexa Plus and Shopping Features With New Frontier and Eclipse Devices

Amazon expands Bee lineup with Frontier and Eclipse

Amazon has announced two new devices from Bee, the AI wearable startup it acquired last year. The $74.99 Bee Frontier is an updated version of the original $50 always-listening wearable, while the $99.99 Bee Eclipse is a credit-card-shaped device that snaps magnetically onto the back of a smartphone and is coming soon.

Both devices are framed as gadgets to help users stay present in the moment. They listen to daily conversations and then provide summaries, transcripts, insights, and to-dos based on what happens throughout the day. Conceptually, they are similar to other AI note-taking gadgets like Plaud NotePin and Limitless AI. Users can also integrate Bee devices with services like Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple HealthKit, and photos, letting the AI draft emails or send calendar invites on the user's behalf based on conversations.

The Frontier can be worn as a Fitbit-like band on the wrist or as a clip-on pin. It has been slightly redesigned from the prior model so the recording button is more prominent, and it now comes in black, green, and lavender. Like the previous version, it has dual microphones, a recording indicator light, roughly seven days of battery life on a single charge, and an IP67 water resistance rating. The Frontier is available starting today.

The Eclipse is positioned as a non-wearable alternative envisioned for more professional use cases. Its larger size allows for a bigger battery that gets 21 days on a single charge, and it also has a recording indicator light. It comes in black, pink, yellow, and silver.

Bee Pro adds Alexa Plus and third-party integrations

Amazon is also introducing a Bee Pro subscription for $11.99 per month. The free tier gets users conversation summaries, recaps, and 14 days of memory. The subscription adds unlimited summaries, suggested to-dos, daily memories, a personal chat assistant, conversation templates, third-party app integrations, and a desktop app.

The marquee feature of the subscription is compatibility with Amazon and Alexa Plus. The Alexa Plus integration is meant to be a hands-free way to access Bee summaries and insights.

Shopping suggestions drawn from conversations

The Amazon integration is opt-in. When enabled, it lets the device surface shopping suggestions based on conversations. For example, if a spouse asks the user to buy cat litter, a product card might appear on the Amazon homepage, or an Amazon button linking out to the product might show up in the Bee mobile app.

Privacy and data handling

The launch comes at a time of backlash against so-called surveillance tech. Amazon told The Verge in a press briefing that Bee devices encrypt transcripts, summaries, and to-dos via its Private Compute security architecture and do not store audio recordings. The devices can also be programmed to automatically stop recording if no sound is detected after a certain period of time.

Whether transcripts are attributable depends on setup. Upon setup, Bee's AI is trained on the individual user's voice. All other speakers are not automatically identified unless they also allow Bee's AI to train on their voice.

Sources: The Verge