Amazon’s personal AI brand Bee has introduced two new devices that listen to your conversations and turn them into summaries, reminders and to-do lists. It is the first new hardware from Bee since Amazon acquired the startup last year.
The Bee Frontier is a wearable that goes on the wrist or clips to clothing. It costs $74.99 and is available now. The Bee Eclipse is a credit-card-sized device that attaches magnetically to the back of a phone. It starts at $99.99 and goes on sale soon.
“They listen to your whole day,” said Amazon devices chief Panos Panay at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. “It reminds you of the conversations you had, it reminds you of to-dos that you may have had.”
A wearable and a phone attachment
The Frontier comes in Lavender, Sage and Onyx with a soft silicone wristband built for all-day wear. It carries an IP67 rating for water resistance, lasts up to seven days on a charge and charges over USB-C. Dual microphones with noise filtering pick up conversations in noisy places like restaurants and open offices.
The Eclipse is about the size of a credit card and snaps onto the back of a phone, so there is nothing extra to carry. Amazon rates its battery at more than 21 days on a single charge. It uses four MEMS microphones plus a vibration microphone to capture both sides of phone calls as well as in-person chats. It comes in Silver, Midnight, Honey and Blush.
Both devices have a single button to start and stop recording, plus an LED light that shows when they are listening. Bee can also switch itself off automatically after a few minutes of silence, and users are prompted to get permission from call participants each time a recording starts.
What Bee does with your conversations
When turned on, Bee builds summaries of your conversations that open in the Bee mobile app or a new desktop app. Templates tailor the output for lectures, care plans or brainstorms. Bee also spots recurring themes and suggests goals and actions based on what you discuss.
Bee connects to Gmail, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook, so it can surface action items, draft follow-up emails and create calendar invites after a call or meeting. It also works with Apple HealthKit and your photos. New integrations with Alexa+ give hands-free access to summaries and to-dos, while a connection to Amazon.com adds shopping recommendations based on things you mention.
Every Bee device includes conversation summaries, recaps and 14 days of memory for free. The Bee Pro subscription costs $11.99 per month and adds unlimited summaries, the Alexa+ and Amazon.com integrations, suggested to-dos, daily memories and a personal chat assistant. New customers get 30 days of Bee Pro free.
Privacy controls
Amazon says both devices run on Bee Private Compute, a setup that processes audio in real time and then deletes it. No audio is ever stored. Transcripts are encrypted with keys that only the user’s own device creates and controls, so even Amazon cannot read them unless the user chooses to share them.
Transcripts and summaries can be deleted at any time. An optional Alexa link lets an Echo device use Voice ID to recognise the owner’s voice before reading out Bee insights, so someone else cannot ask for them.
Price and availability
The Bee Frontier is available now for $74.99 in Onyx, Lavender and Sage. The Bee Eclipse starts at $99.99 in Silver, Midnight, Honey and Blush and will be available soon. Amazon has not given a launch date for the Eclipse yet.
