Amazon debuts two new AI wearable devices that can listen to conversations and help you shop

Amazon debuts two new AI wearable devices that can listen to conversations and help you shop

Amazon.com Inc. today debuted two new wearable, artificial intelligence-enabled devices aimed at making everyday life simpler by listening to conversations and helping users remember what matters.

Bee is a personal AI device, coming in the form of Frontier, a wristband, and Eclipse, a credit-card-shaped magnetic snap-on for smartphones. It can listen into calls and conversations, remember important details, allow people to stay more present in the moment and then provide insights into their day after the fact.

These two devices follow Amazon’s 2025 acquisition of the electronics startup Bee, as part of a strategy to offer more of its own wearable AI devices. These two devices are follow-ups to the previous-generation Bee Pioneer, a wristband similar to a Fitbit.

All of this is available for a subscription of around $12 a month. Frontier costs $75 and Eclipse $100.

When turned on, the Bee devices gather context from conversations and connected apps by listening to provide insights and recommendations. Users can access conversation summaries in the Bee mobile app or on desktop to recall what was discussed. It includes templates tailored to specific needs and settings.

For example, Amazon noted that a user could build a template for lectures, care plans or brainstorming sessions. Users can also review “memories” from the past few days to remember what was discussed. Bee can pick up on recurring trends or themes and recommend personalized goals and actions.

Customers can also connect Bee to apps already in use, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. This means users can ask Bee to help them draft emails and set up calendar events based on past discussions. Users can also hook up Apple HealthKit to create a wellness picture or integrate photos to add a visual layer to daily memories.

Amazon added that with this new generation of hardware, users can connect Bee to Alexa+, the company’s voice assistant, and Amazon.com. This will let users contact Alexa without pulling out their phone to get meeting summaries, check to-dos, or pull up memories or conversation insights forgotten over time.

Of course, it also means that users will get even more personalized shopping recommendations. This would allow the Bee device to surface items and shopping preferences mentioned on the Amazon home page and in the Bee mobile and desktop apps.

AI wearables spark privacy concerns

Amazon’s new Bee devices arrive as AI-wearable device makers face questions both about securing personal information and about obtaining consent from everyone they listen to.

The company said in its marketing material that Bee deletes all processed audio and protects transcripts with device-controlled encryption. However, privacy advocates argue that purchaser control does not necessarily give bystanders and other participants a choice about whether the device is listening.

This is a very familiar socially-focused question that surfaced when Google LLC first debuted its Google Glass wearables more than a decade ago, smart glasses that could record interactions, and persists now again with Meta Platforms Inc.’s smart glasses.

Of course, the question still remains: These devices still upload everything to Amazon and users need to stay aware that their lives are being directed to the internet wherever they go. This is true even if Amazon cannot see or access anything without the user sharing it.

“Even if these companies have perfect data handling processes and perfect privacy records, the risk is being transferred to the consumer instead of being held by the tech company,” Mozilla Foundation Director of Communications Lauren Hendry Parsons told TechRadar.

The market continues to expand from enterprise to personal

Amazon has already pushed out its AI-enabled assistant, Alexa+, across numerous devices and mobile interfaces such as smartphones, tablets and the company’s Echo Dot smart speaker. Its integration with more of Amazon’s smart wearables is the expected next step.

Across the industry, startups such as Plaud Inc., the maker of AI note-taking pins, launched the NotePin S and the Plaud One, a pair of AI-enabled earbuds. Vibe Inc. also debuted a clip-on wearable device for the workplace called Dot that brings an AI assistant to professionals wherever they happen to be, in meetings or in the hallway, by capturing voice commands and conversations.

Wearable devices that listen, and sometimes see, using AI are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in everyday life and work.

Image: Amazon.com