Amazon’s personal AI wearable maker, Bee, is announcing its first new products since being acquired by the retail giant last year. The tech company on Thursday introduced the Bee Frontier, the next generation of its device that can be worn on the wrist or clipped to clothing, along with the Bee Eclipse, a credit card-sized device that magnetically attaches to the back of your smartphone.
The latter puts Bee in more direct competition with AI devices like the Plaud Note or Pocket, but at a lower price point – the Bee Frontier is $74.99, compared to $159 for the Plaud Note (or $189 for the Note Pro), or $129 for the Pocket AI device.
The Bee Frontier comes in Onyx, Lavender and Sage, while the $99.99 Bee Eclipse is offered in Silver, Midnight, Honey and Blush.
Like the original Bee, the idea with the new devices is to leverage AI to take notes from your daily conversations, allowing you to remember the important things that were said, and then turn those into actionable skills, summaries and insights.
For example, if you discussed making plans with friends, Bee will remind you of the date and time you agreed upon, then create a calendar invitation. You can also use Bee to take lecture notes in class, or to record the care plan you discussed with a doctor, among other things.
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 get unlimited conversation summaries and integrations with Amazon.com, Alexa+, and third-party applications. Pro users also get suggested to-dos, daily reminders, a personal chat assistant, and conversation templates.
To make all this possible, Bee devices use a private computing security architecture that does not store the raw audio of your conversations. Instead, audio is processed in real time and then deleted. Transcripts of the conversation are encrypted with keys that your device creates and controls, which means that no one else, including Amazon employees, can access these files unless you manually and carefully share them.
In addition, you can choose to connect the Bee with Alexa, which allows your Echo device to use its ability to identify your voice, a feature called Voice ID, to recognize when you speak. 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.)
With its new connections with Amazon.com and Alexa, Bee users can make purchases from Amazon or ask Alexa for their Bee insights, summaries or hands-free.
Bee also works with your existing productivity software, such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook, so it can draft emails, set meetings, surface action items, and more.
Plus, you can upload photos to Bee or connect them to Apple’s HealthKit to add a picture of your overall wellness to be integrated into your insights provided.
The Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse both have just one button that turns the device on and off, and includes a light when it resumes 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 redesigned, plus a new desktop app.
The Bee Frontier is available now on Amazon, and the Eclipse will be available soon after.
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