Amazon has detailed speech processing and transcript controls for its new Bee devices, while Meta says it resolved an issue raised by a separate user's report of unexpected voice logs in the Meta AI app.
Amazon's Oct. 15 launch of Bee Frontier and Bee Eclipse added two devices to its conversation-summary service. Frontier can be worn on a wrist or clipped to clothing and sells for $74.99. The phone-mounted Eclipse is listed as coming soon, starting at $99.99.
Amazon says a button lets users turn Bee's speech processing on or off, while a light indicates when it is active. Bee transcribes speech in real time and discards the audio afterward, the company says. It encrypts transcripts with keys created by the user's device, and users can delete transcripts and summaries.
For Eclipse calls, Bee asks the user to obtain each participant's permission when processing begins. Bee Pro costs $11.99 a month and includes connections to Alexa+ and Amazon.com. Amazon says Alexa+ can retrieve Bee summaries and tasks, while the Amazon.com connection can generate shopping recommendations from Bee information.
An Amazon-commissioned review of Bee Private Compute identified 21 security issues. Trail of Bits reported Sept. 9 that four had not been fully resolved after Amazon's fixes. It recommended further audits of the agent sandbox and integrations when those features become available to regular users.
In an Oct. 13 report, Android Authority described a Ray-Ban Meta owner's claim that recordings and transcripts from three pairs of glasses had surfaced in the Meta AI app. The owner said they had not used the "Hey Meta" command and had turned off responses without it. Meta told Android Authority it had resolved the issue and said users could review and delete voice logs in settings.
That account is separate from a proposed federal class action filed March 4. Plaintiffs claim Meta did not adequately notify users before sending video, images and audio from its AI glasses to contractors in Kenya for human review.
In a separate Sept. 23 announcement, Meta outlined Private Processing, a planned cloud-based system for AI tasks on its glasses. Meta said larger AI models require computing resources beyond what the glasses can provide locally.
