Just in case your feelings cheat you and you need a more visual reminder on your wrist, you can rely on a new wristband launched by Amazon that doesn’t just track your daily activity, it also gauges how happy a person is by the sound of their voice. Amazon Halo combines data gathered by a sensor-packed wristband with artificial intelligence tools to provide wearers with feedback regarding their physical and mental health.
“Despite the rise in digital health services and devices over the last decade, we have not seen a corresponding improvement in population health in the US,” said Amazon Halo’s principal medical officer Dr Maulik Majmudar in a release. “We are using Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer customers a new way to discover, adopt, and maintain personalized wellness habits.”
People in the United States were invited to request early access to Amazon Halo, which was priced at US$65 and included six months’ membership access to AI-powered analytics. The monthly cost of membership after that will be US$4.
Amazon Halo will rival Apple Watch and Fitbit wristwear in that it will provide users with insights about their activity levels, sleep patterns and more that could be used to make healthy lifestyle decisions. Amazon says that Halo can discern intensity of activity, distinguishing walking from running, and reliably assess a wearer’s level of body fat.
With the help of microphones in the wristbands, a Tone feature is designed to analyze “the positivity and energy” in someone’s voice to asses how happy, sad, tired or excited they sound. “You might see that in the morning you sounded calm, delighted, and warm,” Majmudar said. “Tone results may reveal that a difficult work call led to less positivity in family discussions, an indication of the impact of stress on social well-being.”
To protect privacy, speech samples are analyzed on a wearer’s smartphone, which syncs to their Halo wristband and is then deleted after the process, Majmudar said. Users can turn off Halo microphones by pressing a button on the wristband.
Amazon Halo apps have been tailored for smartphones powered by Apple and Google-backed Android software.
Source: AFP Relax News
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