By will-buy
Amazon Halo wearers can ask Alexa for that latest data collected by the fitness band six months after it debuted with no connection to the voice assistant whatsoever. The opt-in feature lets Halo owners pull up activity scores and other information formerly limited to the wearable on any Alexa-enabled devices.
Alexa Halo
Getting Alexa to inform Halo owners their numbers requires choosing to activate the connection in the Halo Android or iOS app. Keeping it off by default is likely targeted at appeasing those concerned about privacy when it comes to their own health information. Once approved, any Echo smart speaker or other device logged in to the same Amazon account because the Halo will easily notice the consumer their activity score, sleep habits, body composition, or anything else analyzed by the Halo. To help protect privacy, Alexa won’t store any conversation about Halo data in the history. And, the Halo data could be keyed for an additional PIN, to ensure that just the actual user and not just anyone awakening Alexa on their own devices will discover what their fitness band has recorded. The consumer has to make use of the PIN every time they ask a brand new question regarding their Halo data unless they adjust it so the data is accessible for 5 minutes after giving the PIN. Amazon even issued a white paper on all of the new privacy features for Halo data.
“With Halo, customers can trust their health data is protected and in what they can control,” Amazon wrote within the privacy paper. “We've built strict protection mechanisms for customers' most sensitive data, like Body and Tone, by storing it locally on the customer's phone automatically, when possible, and deleting it after it's processed. In doing so, we ensure that Tone speech samples are never accessed and body scan images are only viewed by the customer-we don't use either dataset for improving our machine learning algorithms.”
Halo Health
Halo combines sensors around the Halo Band device with advanced artificial intelligence to generate insights into a wearer's health with an accuracy that Amazon says is comparable to a physician. Halo gathers and analyzes health metrics to set of activity levels, and time put in different stages of sleep, among other health metrics. Halo features a feature called Body that applies Amazon's computer vision technology to wellness by guiding users into capturing that it combines into a three-dimensional body model for measuring excess fat percentage. The app includes a slider to regulate the body fat percentage and show the user how themselves shape might change in turn.
The two microphones around the device don’t allow access to Alexa but are instead employed for the Tone feature, which analyzes the sound of a wearer's voice, reporting the way they may appear to others. Tone measures voice speed, pitch, rhythm, and intensity to build a picture of the wearer’s mood as others might infer it. Once setup, Tone runs in the background, randomly recording short bits of you talking for irregular updates. Tone can also be activated manually, recording almost half an hour or so, and providing real-time analysis. Amazon suggests that it would be useful for practicing speeches and related activities. No matter its new Alexa options, only current those who own the Halo will be able to test it out. The $100 fitness band, which includes 6 months from the $4 per month membership essential to use its features, happens to be unavailable on Amazon’s website and there’s no date listed for it to come back.
