Amazon launches Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse, two AI devices that listen to you from $74.99
Amazon wants AI to always pay attention to what you say. The idea, a priori? Basically, make your life easier. The company has presented through its Bee division two new devices designed to process audio in real time and transform any chat into tasks, summaries or reminders.
It is about the Bee Frontiera body accessory sold for $74.99and of Bee Eclipsea magnetic plate for the back of the mobile phone that will reach the US market by $99.99.
In the case of the Bee Frontier, the proposal involves a lightweight wearable format with a silicone strap, very similar to a Fitbit Air. It is designed to be worn on the wrist or clipped to clothing. It has water resistance certification IP67load via USB-C and a battery that offers up to 7 days of autonomy.
It also integrates two microphones with noise filtering to capture the voice in noisy environments, along with a physical button with an LED indicator that allows you to stop listening and configure automatic shutdown if no sound is detected for several minutes.
A MagSafe accessory with integrated AI
For its part, the Bee Eclipse adopts a different strategy. It is an ultra-thin device, similar in size to a bank card, that attaches to the phone with magnets. Its most notable part is found in the battery, being capable of reaching more than 21 days of use uninterrupted.
The idea of this accessory is to record calls and personal meetings, saving data such as schedules, reservations or informal agreements. According to Amazon, when it does so, it notifies other participants before starting audio capture.
Amazon’s idea is that all the collected material is sent to the cloud and consulted from a mobile application and a computer client. There the system categorizes the information using templates for classes, meetings or work notes. Another interesting point is that the recordings are processed in isolation in a protected environment that discards the audio after extracting the text. However, the resulting text is hosted by Amazon.
On the other hand, the system connects to services such as Gmail, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook to write follow-up emails or schedule appointments automatically. Likewise, the link with Alexa+ allows you to consult voice reminders and adds automatic purchase suggestions on Amazon for the products mentioned during the day.
AI listening to everything in exchange for a subscription
Although the hardware includes basic functions and two weeks of history without paying anything additional, access to the platform’s full potential requires a monthly subscription. The plan Bee Pro costs $11.99 per month after a 30-day trial period. It’s the only one that unlocks unlimited continuous memory, automatic task suggestions, and integration with third-party apps or purchase accounts.
For now, neither of these two devices has a confirmed arrival date in Spain. However, we wanted to include its launch in the United States because it clearly shows the efforts of large technology companies to find real use for AI in the daily lives of users.
At the same time, the format confirms how hardware increasingly acts as an entry point designed to generate dependency in the user and sell monthly fees for services that we probably don’t need as much. A gradual change that, apart from the technical promises about privacy and deletion of recordings, pushes to progressively normalize that AI, using as many channels as possible, pokes its nose into everything we do.
