Amazon unveils Halo, a $100 fitness band with an app to track emotional tone and create 3D scans for body fat, with an optional $4/month subscription service
A New Service that Helps Customers Improve Their Health and Wellness Emily Mullin / OneZero : Want a Free Amazon Halo Wearable? Just Hand Over Your Data To This Major Insurance Company Geoffrey Fowler / Washington Post : Amazon's creepy new health wearable analyzes your voice and your body Maulik Majmudar / The Amazon Blog : A new tool to help you understand and improve your social wellbeing Christina Farr / CNBC : Amazon unveils Halo to battle Apple Watch and Fitbit — tracks activity, body fat, emotions Ryan Whitwam / ExtremeTech : Amazon Halo Tracks Body Fat and Emotions, Demands Monthly Fee for This Kaya Yurieff / CNN : Amazon's new wearable will judge your tone David Pierce / Protocol : TikTok's many possible futures Sophie Charara / WIRED UK : A new Fitbit claims to track your stress levels. Can it really do it? Kelly Earley / Silicon Republic : Amazon takes on Fitbit with its new Halo fitness band Aditi Agrawal / MediaNama : Amazon launches Halo, its fitness tracker band, app; MediaNama's take Didi Rankovic / Reclaim The Net : With a new wearable, Amazon wants to track your emotions Duncan Riley / SiliconANGLE : New Amazon Halo fitness band is designed to track health Tyler Lee / Ubergizmo : Amazon Gets Into Fitness With The Halo Band Joseph Pisani / Associated Press : Amazon has a new fitness tracker and wants to get personal Christine Chan / iMore : Here are all the details on Amazon's new Halo Band health tracker Mehreen Kasana / Input : Nobody needs Amazon's body-shaming Halo fitness tracker Brandon Russell / XDA Developers : Amazon's new Halo fitness tracker can detect your emotions from your voice and 3D scan your body to measure body fat Andrew Martonik / Digital Trends : The Amazon Halo has a lot to prove before it can compete with Fitbit and Apple Kate Kozuch / Tom's Guide : Amazon Halo: Everything you need to know about this Fitbit rival Usman Qureshi / iPhone in Canada Blog : Amazon Introduces New Amazon Halo Fitness Band and Health Subscription Service Thomas Kika / International Business Times : What Is The Amazon Halo? Here's What The New 3D Fitness App Can Tell You About Your Body Victoria Song / Gizmodo : Amazon's New Fitness Tracker Sounds Like a Body-Shaming, Tone-Policing Disaster Chris Nuttall / Financial Times : Walmart in, CEO out at TikTok Samuel Axon / Ars Technica : Amazon Halo will charge a subscription fee to monitor the tone of your voice Tweets: Christina Farr / @chrissyfarr : Huge news: Amazon has come out with a wearable & app to compete with Apple and Fitbit. It has some new features you might not expect: - emotion tracking - body fat % - points vs steps - it's membership-based https://www.cnbc.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Uh Amazon Halo is a LOT. Uses smartphone camera to make a 3D model of your body and measure body fat %. Uses fitness band mic to listen to the tone of your voice and tell you if you're being a jerk. Oh and it's also a normal (screenless) fitness tracker https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... @umbrashinee : amazon asked if i wanted to enroll in amazon Halo, a health tracking program. this is in the email. i love research and i give away a lot of good data but what the fuck https://twitter.com/... Chuck Wendig / @chuckwendig : Ahh, great. The algorithmic tone-policing “you should smile more!” dystopian hell-bracelet 2020 demands we have. https://www.engadget.com/... https://twitter.com/... James Vincent / @jjvincent : Amazon's new fitness band uses AI to track your emotional mood by listening to your voice. Would LOVE to see any studies on the reliability of this because I simply do not believe it works accept in the crudest sense. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Hoefler&Co / @hoeflerco : Of the many reasons to be apprehensive about the new Amazon appliance, which renders images of you in your underwear and then tattles about your emotional state (click to buy chocolate), here's one by one of my favorite lexicographers: the science is, in a word, crap. Read on: https://twitter.com/... Niles Von Stafford / @eigenbroetler : We don't need AI to replace the emotional intelligence coaching parents need to do with their kids, or adults need to review in their own lives. We've all seen Terminator, but this is how this shit starts. https://twitter.com/... James Harbeck / @sesquiotic : Never before have I instinctively wanted to throw a piece of technology on the ground and stamp on it. https://twitter.com/... Charlie Stross / @cstross : This sounds like some dystopian shit your insurance company or healthcare provider would strap to your ankle to monitor you and dock your pay or administer electric shocks if you're too sedentary or show signs of unhappiness. ARE you unhappy, citizen? Because we can FIX you! https://twitter.com/... Evan Greer / @evan_greer : you misspelled “Amazon Halo is a surveillance capitalist wet dream manifested into a wearable device.” https://www.engadget.com/... Caitlin McGarry / @caitlin_mcgarry : Amazon could've just made a cheap fitness tracker, but instead the company made a cheap fitness tracker with features that are, and I'm putting this mildly, problematic as fuck. https://twitter.com/... Chris Davies / @c_davies : Excited to discover today that Amazon's new Halo fitness band would like to listen to your conversations AND take photos of you in your underwear, which feels like something people will absolutely be 100% happy with https://www.slashgear.com/... Agile Wonder / @cloudcomplices : “Uses ML to judge your body fat” 😂. I could do this by looking at your IG account. https://twitter.com/... Kate McKean / @kate_mckean : Please someone write about how the Amazon Halo is an dangerous tool that perpetuates diet culture and fatphobia in the name of “health.” I just can't believe you can take pictures of yourself in yr underwear and MAKE YOURSELF LOOK THINNER WITH A SCROLL BAR https://www.theverge.com/... Meredith Whittaker / @mer__edith : New 3D body scanner and “emotion monitor” from the company that complied with at least 2000 law enforcement requests for intimate recordings of private conversations and domestic activities taken surreptitiously by Alexa-enabled devices. https://www.theverge.com/... Lauren Masks Are Goode / @laurengoode : Back in 2016 I asked Bezos if Amazon was exploring wearables and he said they were “super interesting” but still in infancy and when I asked again he said “Sounds like you want a product job” which is certainly one way to deflect, and now there's...this https://www.theverge.com/... Sapna Maheshwari / @sapna : imagine all the things you could advertise and sell to a person with all this knowledge https://twitter.com/... Rosie Gray / @rosiegray : i can't wait for amazon to track my emotions https://twitter.com/... Christina Farr / @chrissyfarr : Also notable: Amazon's wearable Halo is linked to Cerner's EMR. So the health data can be shared with a doctor/care team. The task will be to ensure it's clinically relevant and fits into the existing workflow. https://www.cnbc.com/... Kara Swisher / @karaswisher : I usually call them all unwearables, but this is fascinating and more than a little scary: Amazon Halo wearable tracks activity, body fat, emotions https://www.cnbc.com/... Edward Ongweso Jr / @bigblackjacobin : Is it possible to make something that alerts you when one of these surveillance devices is nearby? Or fucks with them? https://www.cnbc.com/... Stephen Hall / @hallstephenj : We sense your emotional tone has become tense today, which of these calming teas would you like shipped to your home with same day Prime delivery? https://twitter.com/... John / @pippedtodeath : ‘Track emotional tone’ sounds straight out of the voight kampff test from Blade Runner. no fcking thanks, Jeff. https://twitter.com/... Tom Warren / @tomwarren : there's no way I'm gonna let Amazon see my dad bod to tell me I am 100% fat. I'll use an innocent mirror for that, thanks Amazon https://twitter.com/... Brian Roemmele / @brianroemmele : The new Amazon Halo is a wonderful way for Amazon to enter into a very crowded and competitive market. It has features expected fitness band. But the amazing aspect is the emotional tonality of your voice throughout the day. A powerful window into mental health. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Will Oremus / @willoremus : I wrote last fall about Amazon's evolution into a surveillance company—the “everywhere store.” https://onezero.medium.com/... Today it announced a fitness band that makes 3D scans of your body and monitors your tone of voice: https://www.theverge.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : My main concern with Amazon Halo isn't the voice tone thing (mostly I find that weird), it's the ability to move a slider on an accurate 3D image of your body to decrease body fat. Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Amazon Halo, for dads: - Activity: Need to exercise more but don't want to go to the gym or become a fitness buff - Sleep: Need to be convinced two scotches before bed is a bad idea - Body: Getting a beer gut but won't fully admit it - Tone: Needs to quit yelling at the kids Brian Fung / @b_fung : I'm having trouble understanding who they mean by “customer” here. Do they mean “user” or are they envisioning, like, an office worker ending a conference call and then lashing out at a client? https://press.aboutamazon.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Shira Ovide / @shiraovide : Amazon would like to analyze “energy and positivity in a customer's voice” to help us improve our mental well being. I'm all for things that can nudge us to change our behavior, but maybe not this? https://press.aboutamazon.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Me: Sometimes I feel like smartphones know too much about us. Amazon: Our app creates a 3D scan of your body and then uses advanded AI to determine exactly how much what percentage of your body is fat. https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Sam Byford / @345triangle : note to amazon, everyone has an accent. yes, even jeff bezos https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/...