Don't already know you're blue? Amazon's new fitness tracker will let you know that too
Amazon on Thursday unveiled a wristband that goes beyond simply tracking activity to gauging how happy a person is by the sound of their voice.
Amazon Halo combines data gathered by a sensor-packed wristband with artificial intelligence tools to supply wearers with feedback regarding their physical and mental health, the web titan said.
Amazon might already really know what books you prefer and how often you will need toilet paper, but the fitness tracker can provide the company a wealth of new information regarding its customers, although Amazon says it won’t utilize the for marketing or advertisements or even to sell you stuff.
“Regardless of the rise in digital health services and devices during the last decade, we've not seen a corresponding improvement in population health in the US,” Amazon Halo’s principal medical officer Dr Maulik Majmudar said in a release.
“We are employing Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine understanding how to offer customers a fresh way to find, adopt, and keep maintaining personalised wellness habits.”
People in america were invited to request early access to Amazon Halo, which was coming in at $65 and included six months’ membership usage of AI-powered analytics. The regular cost of the device, without any screen, is pegged at $100.
There’s also a monthly $4 charge to use all of its features. Those that don’t pay up can still track steps, sleep times and heart rates.
Amazon Halo takes on Apple Watch and Fitbit wristwear that provide people with insights about activity levels, sleep patterns and more that may be used to create healthy lifestyle decisions.
Halo can discern intensity of activity, distinguishing walking from running, and reliably assess a wearer’s degree of surplus fat, according to Amazon.
To measure surplus fat, Amazon is asking users to get personal, scanning their body with their smartphone cameras while wearing boxers or a sports bra with bike shorts.
Jon Reily, global chief strategy officer at Dentsu Commerce and a former Amazon executive, says that the microphones in the tracker may help it listen to how people talk, which will make its voice assistant Alexa smarter by detecting moods and providing better responses.
By using microphones in the wristbands, a Tone feature was created to analyse “the positivity and energy” in someone’s voice to evaluate how happy, sad, tired or excited they sound, the company said.
“You may see that in the morning you sounded calm, delighted, and warm,” Majmudar said.
“Tone results may reveal a difficult work call led to less positivity in family discussions, a sign of the impact of stress on social well-being.”
To safeguard privacy, speech samples are analysed on a wearer’s smartphone-which syncs with their Halo wristband-and then deleted after the process, Majmudar said.
People can change off Halo microphones by pressing a button on the wristband, he added.
Data is a nervous about other fitness trackers, including FitBit, which tech giant Google is along the way of buying. Regulators in Europe are investigating how the deal could give Google more data to use for personalised ads, furthering its dominant position in the online ad market.
Amazon Halo apps have already been tailored for smartphones powered by Apple and Google-backed Android software, according to Amazon.
Seattle-based Amazon has been trying to score a hit in the competitive wearable tech business, which is dominated in america by FitBit and the Apple Watch. This past year, Amazon started selling wireless earbuds, finger rings and prescription eyeglasses with Alexa built in, but none have proven to be hits up to now. Will this fitness tracker with out a screen manage any better?
