Amazon unveiled its Halo health and fitness tracker over the summer that pairs with an AI-powered app to provide users insight into their overall wellness – but it seems to also shame wearers.
The Washington Post released a report that the technology points out flaws such as an overbearing voice or too much body fat.
The wearable is equipped with a tiny microphone that listens to your voice, allowing it to determine the tone and shares descriptions such as ‘opinionated’ or ‘condescending.’
Users can also upload a near-naked image of themselves to the companion app, which is analyzed by AI to determine their body composition.
The app not only displays body fat percentage, but also shows users how they would look after shedding a few pounds.
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Amazon unveiled its Halo health and fitness tracker over the summer that pairs with an AI-powered app to provide users insight into their overall wellness – but it seems to also shame wearers The wearable is equipped with a tiny microphone that listens to your voice, allowing it to determine the tone and shares descriptions such as ‘opinionated’ or ‘condescending
Geoffrey Fowler and Heather Kelly, with The Washington Post, were able to get a pre-release experience with Halo, which they say provides more data to Amazon about you than it does helping you become healthier.
Amazon revealed Halo in August that detects emotion by analyzing speech, monitors sleep through heart rate and tracks activity based on the intensity and duration of movement.
Halo is not available to the public, only by invitation to its ‘early access’ release, but is set to cost $99 with a $3.99 monthly subscription fee.
The wristband resembles more of a Fitbit than an Apple Watch with just a band and a sensor housing capsule along the inside.
Users can also upload a near-naked image of themselves to the companion app, which is analyzed by AI to determine their body composition. The app not only displays body fat percentage, but also shows users how they would look after shedding a few pounds
The capsule is what brings the device together, as it holds a range of sensors that gathers accurate information about the wear that are calculated into insights about their health.
There is an accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a heart rate monitor, two microphones, an LED indicator light, and a button to turn the microphones on or off, among other functions.
Unlike both Fitbit and Apple, Halo will share detailed metrics – even if you do not want to hear them.
Fowler and Kelly each reviewed a band, with an additional goal of seeing if the wearable is capable of determining genders – a skill important to analyzing tone of voice and fat composition.
As Halo learns, it begins organizing conversations into positives or negatives, along with high or low energy. An example of how the AI determines what words to describe tone is if the technology registers a voice as negative and low energy, it may classify it as ‘discouraged’
During the voice testing, Halo described Fowler’s voice as ‘opinionated’ and Kelly’s was tagged as ‘dismissive’ and ‘condescending’ – descriptions appear in the companion app.
This feature works by constantly listening to the user’s voice, allowing it to recognize their sounds and tones.
As Halo learns, it begins organizing conversations into positives or negatives, along with high or low energy.
An example of how the AI determines what words to describe tone is if the technology registers a voice as negative and low energy, it may classify it as ‘discouraged.’
The Washington Post notes that Amazon harnessed this power by training its tone AI for years using real voice recordings and has also done extensive trials with the hopes of weeding out biases that could occur depending on the user’s ethnicity, gender or age.
The Halo privacy policy states Amazon will not sell data captured by the wearable and uploaded into the app without user permission. But, according to The Washington Post, the policy does not say the tech giant cannot profit from it
However, Fowler and Kelly found that the AI tends to repeat descriptions such as ‘focused,’ ‘interested,’ and ‘knowledgeable.’
Negative terms Fowler included ‘opinionated,’ ‘stern,’ and ‘hesitant’ and Kelly received ‘dismissive,’ ‘stubborn,’ ‘stern’ and ‘condescending’ more.
Along with telling users they sounds unpleasant, Halo will keeps them aware about body fat.
The app allows users to upload an image of themselves, which is of them in underwear, and transforms it into a 3D render that appears with more or less body fat.
The system is not designed to offer personalized plans or suggestions to help the wearer improve their physique.
It does, however, display the person’s current body fat percentage and weight in the app.
The Halo privacy policy states Amazon will not sell data captured by the wearable and uploaded into the app without user permission.
But, according to The Washington Post, the policy does not say the tech giant cannot profit from it.
The e-commerce giant may, for example, use your heart rate, sleep and tone to improve its health algorithms.
