Amazon’s new Echo Studio gives Alexa + an AI camera to see in your home

ZDNET’s key takeaways

• Amazon unveils Echo Studio with home camera, now available for $250.
• Its camera can monitor a room or help Alexa answer questions about its view.
• More companies are adding all-seeing or all-hearing tech to their devices.

Amazon’s new Echo Studio with home camera does exactly what it sounds like: add a camera to the premium smart speaker for home monitoring, visual assistance and video calls. It is now available for $250 and is another attempt by Amazon to see more homes.

Also: Today’s 4 Biggest Amazon Smart Home Announcements

What can the Echo Studio do with a home camera?

The camera serves as a security camera when you are away and as an assistant when you are in the room. Amazon said it will add Alexa + “visual intelligence” to see and do more. For example, Echo Studio can explain the rules of a board game when it appears in Studio’s view or help you order more of a product when you show it to the camera. It could help you buy more things from Amazon – how convenient.

Also: The Amazon Echo Dot Max Is $30 Off: Should You Upgrade?

Later this year, Echo Studios and Amazon Fire TVs will gain compatibility, so you can use the Echo Studio’s camera to initiate video calls that will be cast on the TV.

The Echo Studio comes with advanced room adaptation that maps the sound to a room in you – it collects your distance from the speaker to lower or raise the volume as you move around, so you can hear the music at your desired volume regardless of your distance from the device.

Amazon

The new speakers are powered by Amazon’s AZ3 silicon chip, which helps Alexa pick up conversations faster and cut background noise. Its on-device processing helps your conversations with the Amazon robot sound a little less robotic.

Amazon’s Omnisense technology monitors the conditions of a room to adjust the room temperature and lighting. This will come in handy now that Amazon has made the Dot its own smart home hub that can control other compatible devices around the house. This makes the Amazon Echo almost obsolete as a standalone smart home hub.

What are the privacy concerns?

Tech companies continue to release products with always-on recording and listening capabilities, to the discomfort of many users and privacy advocates.

In September, Apple unveiled two controversial always-listening features on its Apple Watch that capture the last seconds of a conversation and display the transcript on screen, as well as a feature that summarizes meetings. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are another recent subject of scrutiny. Because the glasses can be picked up by people in public without their knowledge, people started to call the Ray-Bans “pervert glasses”.

Also: I’m a fan of the Echo Show 11, even if it’s not perfect

And I’d be remiss not to mention flock cameras: Traffic cameras are so unpopular that they’ve become a bipartisan rallying cry against state surveillance.

People have raised concerns that these devices can listen or see into the most private parts of their lives and use that information to sell them more stuff – or abuse it altogether. A few years ago, Amazon’s own Ring employees could see through users’ cameras into their homes. This led to a class action lawsuit that left Amazon to pay users $5 million in settlements.

Amazon

The Echo Studio with Home Camera includes a dedicated button that cuts power to the mics and camera, but using it would limit the device’s smart functionality. An LED shows when the camera is streaming, but again, users can turn it off entirely with the mute button.

“The camera is not continuously on,” Amazon said in a statement to ZDNET. “It’s only activated when you’re using a feature that uses the camera,” such as checking via Live View, making video calls, or asking Alexa to watch something. In other words, you have to trigger the camera.

How quickly customers will buy this smart home camera and speaker, find a use for it and not be weirded out by surveillance remains to be seen.

How much does the Echo Studio with home camera cost?

The Echo Studio with home camera is available now for $250.

Raemont said

Editor, Wearables & Health Tech

Nina Raemont is ZDNET’s Health and Wearables Editor based in New York City. She is constantly testing health trackers and always has at least two (but usually three) around her fingers or wrist. She was formerly an associate writer for CNET. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota. In her spare time she is in her kitchen trying out a new baking recipe.

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