ESPNFollow live: Seahawks look to bounce back, visit BroncosCNN TürkTBMM'de Kızılay teklifinde 3 madde kabul edildiESPN DeportesLiga MX: Horarios y cómo ver la Jornada 12 del Apertura 2026The Jerusalem PostThree children, one adult killed in shooting at school in Oregon, US media reportsPunchReport finds $209bn funding gap for African businessesInquirer3 weather systems affect PH on Friday, says Pagasa한겨레‘가장 가까운 친척’ 유인원 46마리, 오늘도 국내 동물원 철창 속에UOLLula anuncia PEC para zerar tarifa de ônibus aos fins de semanaZDF heuteSo haben sich die Mieten in Ihrer Region entwickeltThe Hollywood ReporterBen Affleck Warns ‘Digger’ Box Office Bomb Will Lead to “A Bunch of Sh***y Homogenized Movies”Het Laatste NieuwsDe Wever vindt dat Europa aan financiële noden van Oekraïne moet voldoen (maar niet met de bevroren Russische tegoeden bij Euroclear)The Sydney Morning HeraldKelly Clarkson thinks she’s Pretty Woman. Then she throws a wally over a $22k mechanical bird
The Daily Newsstand · Free, Always
Friday, October 16, 2026

New Amazon Bee Personal AI Devices Will Listen and Record You

Translate

Trying to remember things yourself is so yesterday — or so AI-wearable makers want you to believe. Amazon on Thursday announced two new products, the Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse, which use AI to record conversations and then process them into “summaries, to-dos, reminders and insights.”

The Frontier can be worn on your wrist or your clothes, and the Eclipse attaches magnetically to the back of your phone. They are both from Amazon Bee, which is the company’s lineup of AI-powered personal assistant devices and software. Amazon acquired AI-wearable company Bee in July 2025.

There are several ways you might use the devices. Maybe you’re talking with a friend at the coffee shop about details you’ll want to remember later. The Bee Frontier — on your wrist or clipped to your clothes — can record the conversation and give you a transcript or summary, much like AI tools like Gemini can do during a business meeting. The Bee Eclipse, attached to the back of your phone, can record your phone calls and give you transcripts and summaries of your calls.

More from CNET

Just make sure you ask your conversation partners if they mind being recorded.

Amazon says you can also review memories to remember conversation details, and Bee can recommend personalized goals and actions, depending on themes or trends it picks up on.

“The more you use Bee, the smarter it becomes, learning your unique patterns, preferences and relationships, building a progressively smarter understanding of your world without demanding attention,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNET via email.

You can view all the output in the Bee mobile or desktop app.

The Bee Frontier costs $75, and the Bee Eclipse will cost $100, though the Eclipse is not yet available. Users can pick between two tiers of service: The free one allows you to get conversation summaries and recaps for up to 14 days, while the Bee Pro subscription costs $12 per month, which gets you a personal chat assistant and provides unlimited memory, integrations with Amazon, Alexa Plus and third-party apps and suggests to-do lists.

Amazon Bee Frontier and Eclipse in all colors
The Amazon Bee Frontier and Eclipse come in various colors.Amazon

Amazon Bee Frontier goes on wrists or clothes

The Frontier can be worn on the wrist or attached to your clothes. It’s made out of ultrasoft silicone and comes in three colors — lavender, sage and onyx. A fully charged battery can last up to seven days and uses USB-C charging. The device has dual microphones and advanced noise filtering for crowded and loud places.

CNET AI Atlas badge; click to see more

Audio recording begins by pressing a button, and a light goes on to show that it’s recording. You can also configure it to stop if there has not been sound for a certain period.

Amazon Bee Eclipse attaches to phones

The size of a credit card, the Eclipse can magnetically attach to the back of a phone and comes in four colors — silver, midnight, honey and blush. A fully charged battery can last three weeks and maybe more, according to Amazon.

You begin and stop recording with the Eclipse by pressing a button, and an LED light goes on to indicate that recording is in progress.

Connecting with Alexa Plus and apps

Amazon said the Bee Frontier and Eclipse can connect to Alexa Plus, Amazon’s new AI-powered assistant, and also Amazon.com. So, instead of getting conversation summaries, insights and to-dos by looking at the Bee app on your phone, you could just ask Alexa Plus to read them to you.

When connected to Amazon, the Bee device can present shopping recommendations on the Amazon home page or in the Bee mobile and desktop apps. For example, say your friend recommends a certain book while talking to you. The Frontier or Eclipse will hear that, locate it on Amazon and show that listing to you.

You can also link the Frontier and Eclipse to other apps, such as Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar. Amazon said Bee devices can draft emails and create calendar invites based on recorded conversations. Bee devices can also connect to your Apple HealthKit “to build a more complete picture of your wellness,” Amazon said.

What about data privacy?

Amazon said it does not store recorded audio, and you can neither access nor share it. You’ll be prompted to get permission from callers when those calls are being recorded, but it is not mandatory — the recording will still happen.

Expect the AI accessories market to grow. “Who doesn’t want to stop forgetting names and dinner plans?” asks Jon Rettinger, a tech tester with more than 1.66 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. But Rettinger said that invasion of privacy could be an issue, especially for people being recorded by someone using the Bee Frontier and Eclipse.

There are 12 states in the US where it is legally required that callers be notified that they are being recorded, known as “all-party consent.”

“The people around you never agreed to any of it, and a little light on your wrist isn’t much of a warning,” Rettinger told CNET. “In California, you legally need everyone’s consent to record a private conversation, and I’d guess most people buying these have no clue. For a work meeting where everybody knows it’s on, great. Wearing it all day is a different story.”

Amazon says Bee Private Compute — a security system built into both devices — processes conversations inside a secure and isolated environment “where no one, including Amazon, can access your data.”

After audio is recorded and processed into insights in real time, it is deleted, Amazon said. No one can get to your insights data unless you share it, and conversation transcripts are encrypted and are not accessible unless you choose to share them.

You can delete transcripts and summaries whenever you want in the app.

Alex Valdes

Ever since being admittedly fascinated by the Cambridge coffee webcam from the 1990s, I've written about VPNs, the NFL, smartphones, living wages, over/unders and everything in between.

View the original on CNET →

KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.