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I had everything day of CES wearing a small yellow bracelet. To the bystanders who were nearby, they may have seemed brave. But all the while, this yellow-clad Pioneer from Bee AI recorded everything around me. It didn’t save audio like a recording app, but it edited my speech, then gave me a to-do list and a readable summary of my conversation.
A few days before the trade show, I spoke with the founder of another new company, Omi, which was revealed for the first time today. Guess what that does? Capture everything around you to create a log, and then the AI will relay that information to provide you with information and tasks for your day, almost like an assistant. Omi’s wearables can go around your neck, but they’re best worn on your forehead near your temple—they have an electroencephalogram inside, and Omi says that if you decide to talk to the wearable, the device will understand and tune in to receive it. your request.
This is the new world we live in, with smart wearables constantly capturing the world around us. Voice assistants – which first landed in our speakers and phones, but quickly moved to our hands and faces – required a quick action like a bomb or a wake-up call to get attention. But the next wave of hardware assistants, which include the upcoming Friend pendantit can absorb things passively and work in the background. He is listening all the time.
The wearable devices that lead the way are often relatively cheap — the Bee AI watch is just $50, and the Omi bracelet is $89 — but the real magic is in the software, which often requires a subscription because it’s embedded in history. Major languages analyze your conversations.
Bee AI
Bee AI was founded by Maria de Lourdes Zollo and Ethan Sutin. Both previously worked on Squad (Sutin is the founder), which enabled video sharing in video chats so people could watch the same video or YouTube video together. The company was bought by X (back when it was called Twitter), and the two teamed up briefly to work on Twitter Spaces. Zollo previously worked at Tencent and Musical.ly, which later became TikTok.
Sutin says he looked at the idea of an AI assistant back in 2016 when chatbots were all the rage, but the technology wasn’t there. It’s not like that anymore. The company launched its Bee AI platform last February in beta, with a team providing feedback. It just started selling its Pioneer gear over a week ago. (The name “Bee” is related to the idea of a spinning computer, as if something is happening and taking in information.) need the company’s devices to use Bee AI—you can only interact with the AI through an iPhone app—but Zollo says the wearable provides more information because it can record continuously throughout the day. An Android app is on the way at the end of the month.
Clothes are simple. It has two noise-recognition microphones, and Sutin says that if you can hear the person you’re talking to in a busy environment, the wearable they should being able to hear both sides. It can be worn as an armband or clipped to your shirt. There is an “Action” button in the middle; pressing once disables the microphone, pressing again enables them. You can press and hold a button, and this is user-configurable, so it can trigger things like editing a conversation or waking up the “Buzz” AI assistant to ask a question. (There is no speaker on the dresser, so answers will be spoken through your phone.) When the microphone is muted, there will be a red light. When it’s recording, you’d think the green LED would light up, but there’s nothing to indicate that the device is capturing anything around you.
