Bee Pioneer: An always-listening, AI-powered bracelet
Sunday, January 12, 2025 at 8:59PM 
Photo: Bee
The Bee Pioneer hopes to succeed where the Rabbit R1 and Humane AI Pin haven't. The new wrist-worn artificial intelligence-powered device comes in a more discreet basic fitness band look. And it is more affordable at US$49.99 (around CA$72).
Bee's team created the accessory as an "always listening" device. It keeps tabs on your conversations to know which information it could use to create to-do lists, build a knowledge base on your life, and give you summaries of your day. The Bee Pioneer is even designed to do basic tasks on your phone, like sending messages for you, using an emulated version of your phone on the cloud.
You can ask the accessory questions related to the conversations you've had. The device won't store any audio, but it will keep full transcripts of your conversations. When you ask your questions, it'll answer using a mix of commercial and open-source large language models like Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
The Bee Pioneer has sensitive mics to make it easier to pick up the sounds around you, but it doesn't come with speakers. Instead, it'll answer through the speaker on your phone. And you can control it partly through the mobile app as well. The app also lets you label those you are speaking with, so it can remember their voices and label them accurately in the future.
The question remains whether you'd want a device constantly listening to you. The Bee Pioneer has a mute option, and its creators will set up a bug bounty program to ensure security-related bugs are squashed. Its developers also hope to implement geo-blocking so you can set places where it won't listen to your conversations (like your office).
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