Amazon bought a company that sells you a wrist microphone so it can tell you what you already said. The device is called Bee. It blinks green while it records, which is honest, I'll give it that.
The pitch is that Bee transcribes your meetings and summarizes your day. During a Reservoir Dogs viewing, it correctly identified the screaming as cinema and filed the evening under "Tarantino Film Scene Analysis." That's a better recap than I'd manage. It also quietly omitted chunks of an actual work call, which is the one place I needed it.
To function properly Bee wants your location, photos, contacts, calendar, notifications, sleep data, and resting heart rate. Dr. Pilar Ostrom at the Lower Hudson Center for Ambient Consent estimates the average user surrenders 14.7 categories of personal information before the first charge cycle ends. The reward is a bulleted list of things you remember saying.
Amazon says the data is encrypted at rest and in transit. Amazon has also had a data incident or twelve. Both of these can be true. I won't be following up on the local-only version they teased a YouTuber with; that timeline belongs to someone with more patience.
The green light is, genuinely, a nice touch.
Based on the original article "I tried Amazon's Bee wearable and am both intrigued and slightly creeped out".
