They harvest enormous amounts of data about the most intimate details of our lives and use it to fuel their profit machine and strengthen their monopolistic grip.Īmazon’s Halo claims to be able to assess mood and stress levels. “Amazon is building a surveillance empire, a privately owned panopticon,” said Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future. We are using Amazon’s deep expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning to offer customers a new way to discover, adopt, and maintain personalised wellness habits,” said Dr Maulik Majmudar, Amazon Halo’s principal medical officer.įor many, those AI tools may prove a step too far.
“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.
“Halo analyses the intensity and duration of your movement, not just steps,” the company says, citing guidance from the American Heart Association. Instead, Amazon hopes that it will make up with its AI tools what it lacks in pure sensors. But without a GPS system, for instance, it can’t accurately track movement, while advanced features like the Apple Watch’s EKG are also absent. An accelerometer, temperature sensor and heart rate monitor allows it to do simple tracking of exertion levels and basic health. The Halo Band itself, which costs $99 and resembles a wristwatch turned inside out, has a relatively simple array of sensors compared with its competitors. The company says these features allow the Halo system to do more with less. Meanwhile, a set of AI tools built into the accompanying service, which will cost $3.99 a month in the US (it is not currently available in the UK), will attempt to gauge information such as weight and body fat percentage by asking users to take undressed selfies with the app.
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