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Amazon dropped a surprise yesterday: Halo, a wearable band, wellness subscription platform, and smartphone app. I’m thinking the device will perform better than the Fire Phone, but worse than Beyonce’s smash hit, “Halo.”
What’s new?
Halo will ship with a number of novel attributes. For one, the gadget is priced pretty low: $99.99 for the device, plus a $3.99 monthly subscription tacked on.
While the screenless band isn't a medical device, Amazon says it has a number of health and wellness features in addition to more general tech like Bluetooth connectivity and mics.
- Hardware: Halo has an accelerometer, temp sensor, heart rate monitor, and a toggle for mic on/off.
- Software: The “Body and Tone” feature provides users with a 3D rendering of their body, with data on weight and body fat %.
The mics aren’t for Alexa—they’re for “tone of voice analysis.” In practical terms, that means the device can purportedly track emotions by analyzing users’ tone of voice.
“Purportedly” was on purpose
Amazon has patents on patents for voice recognition and emotional intelligence analysis. Emotion recognition is a blossoming AI sub-genre—but experts have doubts about the ability of machine learning systems to discern messy human emotions. Even so, I think it’s a safe bet to say Alexa knows when you get mad at her by now.
Halo also raises concerns about consumer privacy and Amazon cross-selling products based on bodily indicators. For its part, Amazon says it won’t store voice snippets in the cloud nor use them for ad targeting. And while Halo is a consumer product, it's not farfetched to imagine Amazon using its tech to surveil fulfillment workers.
Zoom out: Amazon likes loss leaders. It sells Kindles at a loss, then runs up its margins through sales of digital media. I’d wager Halo is also being sold below-cost, which Amazon hopes to reconcile through the sweet allure of recurring subscription revenue, and eventually/potentially, add-on services.