This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we start by opening the listener mailbag, highlighting some recent comments that set a new standard for critical feedback, in different ways.
We discuss Vayo, the AI travel venture Booking Holdings is launching in Seattle, home of its biggest rival, Expedia. Led by recent guest Mike Fridgen, Vayo uses AI agents to manage your trips. It’s an example of the broader push to build personalized AI agents, even as more companies wall off their sites from rival agents.
Then we take on LinkedIn’s list of the top Seattle startups, where four of the top 10, including No. 1 Anthropic, aren’t headquartered in the region.
And finally, we talk about Amazon’s new Bee AI wearables, which can turn things you say into shopping suggestions on Amazon.com if you opt in and pay $12 a month. That leads into the GeekWire Trivia Challenge, about an earlier Amazon wristband that listened to you.
Amazon Bee’s recording light is easy to miss, says a former AWS security engineer. (Amazon Image)
Amazon’s new Bee AI devices ask the wrong person for consent, according to a privacy and security veteran who previously worked as a senior principal security engineer at Amazon Web Services.
In a LinkedIn article, Jeff Williams writes that Bee’s consent safeguards are aimed at the wearer, while the people being recorded have no practical way to say no.
Both turn conversations into summaries and to-do lists, with connections to Amazon.com and Alexa+ for paid subscribers.
How Bee handles consent: Amazon says users are prompted to get permission from call participants each time they start a recording, and the devices show an indicator light while in use.
The problem, Williams says, is that neither one reliably tells the other people in a conversation that they’re being recorded. He writes that the prompt appears only on the wearer’s phone, and nothing enforces it.
“A prompt instructing the user to obtain permission is a liability allocation,” he wrote, arguing that Amazon is shifting responsibility for obtaining consent onto the wearer.
The light is easy to hide under a sleeve or in a pocket, he notes, and a device on the wrist or phone sits outside the frame on a video call.
Williams points to Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses as an example. In September, the data protection authority in Hamburg, Germany, found the glasses’ recording light hard to see outdoors and concluded that a recording indicator alone doesn’t establish informed consent under Europe’s GDPR.
In the U.S., about a dozen states, including Washington state and California, generally require consent from everyone before a private conversation can be recorded.
Whose data is protected: Williams gives Amazon credit for Bee Private Compute, which processes audio in an isolated, encrypted environment built on AWS Nitro and then deletes it. Amazon says only the customer can access the resulting data, not Amazon or Bee.
But that protects the wearer. The words of the people around the wearer still end up in transcripts and summaries they can’t see or remove. Amazon says those speakers aren’t identified by name unless they complete a voice training exercise with the device’s owner.
Williams notes that Amazon has changed comparable privacy commitments before, such as ending the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” option on some Echo devices last year.
Williams also advises companies to keep the devices out of client meetings and privileged discussions, since the transcripts end up in an employee’s personal account, where the company can’t see or manage them.
A proposed fix: Williams says Bee should leave other people’s voices out of transcripts by default, unless they’ve enrolled their voices and agreed to be recorded. Before the acquisition, Bee indicated plans to record only the voices of people who had verbally consented, according to TechCrunch.
“I know first-hand that Amazon has the engineering talent to ship it,” he wrote.
Amazon’s response: The company didn’t comment directly on the critique but pointed to safeguards built into the devices.
One is an automatic shutoff: the devices turn off if they don’t detect the owner’s voice for 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes, depending on the user’s setting. Amazon says that reinforces that Bee is “a personal AI assistant, not a device designed to passively pick up audio throughout the day.”
The company says it educates customers about responsible use in the Bee app, and that Eclipse will send push notifications encouraging users to let people around them know they’re using Bee and to ask for permission.
Williams, now chief information security officer at Sigma360, worked at AWS from 2023 to 2025 and spent more than 12 years at Microsoft before that, including as a privacy officer for its services business. Read his full article on LinkedIn. Read his full article on LinkedIn.
Amazon’s new Bee Frontier wristbands, front, and Bee Eclipse devices, which attach magnetically to the back of a phone. (Amazon Image)
Bee, the AI wearables startup Amazon acquired last year, makes devices that remember what people say in everyday conversations. A new update, announced Thursday morning, includes a feature that turns those passing remarks into shopping suggestions on Amazon.com.
For example, as described by Amazon, someone might mention offhand that they’re out of dish soap, and a product recommendation would show up on Amazon.com and in the Bee mobile and desktop apps. Amazon pitches it as a way for people to remember to buy things they need.
It’s the kind of thing many people have long suspected their phones of doing secretly, listening to conversations and serving up related content or ads. Researchers haven’t found evidence of that. Either way, Amazon’s twist is to do it openly — and to make it voluntary.
The feature is opt-in, meaning it won’t happen unless users choose to connect their Bee accounts to Amazon.com, and Bee says it won’t share data with Amazon without user consent.
The Amazon.com integration requires Bee Pro, a $12 monthly subscription that also includes unlimited conversation summaries and the ability to ask Alexa+ about things Bee has captured.
New hardware: The feature is part of a broader announcement that includes the first new Bee devices under Amazon’s ownership: Bee Frontier, a $74.99 wristband that can also clip onto clothing, and Bee Eclipse, which attaches magnetically to the back of a phone and starts at $99.99.
Bee Eclipse attaches magnetically to the back of a phone and starts at $99.99. Amazon says it will be available soon. (Amazon Image)
Bee Frontier, available now, has dual microphones, up to seven days of battery life and IP67 water resistance. Bee Eclipse, about the size of a credit card, runs more than 21 days on a charge and will be available soon, Amazon says.
Amazon says Bee lets people pay attention to a conversation instead of taking notes, keeping track of details such as when and where they agreed to meet a friend. The devices turn conversations into summaries, to-dos and reminders.
Users can read their summaries in the Bee mobile app or a new desktop app, formatted for different kinds of conversations, such as lectures, care plans and brainstorming sessions. Bee also picks up on recurring themes in conversations and suggests goals and actions.
Bee connects to apps including Gmail, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. After a call or meeting, it can list action items, draft follow-up emails or create calendar invites based on the conversation.
Users can also link Bee to Apple HealthKit and to their photos. Most of those features, including the desktop app and third-party integrations, also require Bee Pro.
Without a subscription, Bee users get conversation summaries and 14 days of memory. New customers get 30 days of Bee Pro free.
How Bee handles privacy: Amazon says Bee runs on a system it calls Bee Private Compute, which processes conversations in an isolated environment where “no one, including Amazon, can access your data.” Audio is deleted after it’s processed, and transcripts are encrypted with keys controlled by the user’s device.
Both new devices turn on and off with a single button and show a light when they’re running. For phone calls, Bee Eclipse prompts users to get permission from the other people on the call each time it starts, according to Amazon.
Bee and Amazon: Amazon acquired Bee in July 2025 for an undisclosed price. At the time, the San Francisco startup, led by co-founders Maria de Lourdes Zollo and Ethan Sutin, had raised $7 million and sold a $49.99 wristband called Bee Pioneer.
Thursday’s update connects Bee to two of Amazon’s biggest consumer businesses: its online store, through the product recommendations; and Alexa+, the new version of its longtime voice assistant, by letting users ask Alexa+ on an Echo device about things Bee has captured.
Amazon isn’t the only tech giant betting on AI devices.
Apple last month announced Siri Recap, an opt-in feature that summarizes conversations on its new Apple Watches, set to arrive in beta later this year.
Meta bought Limitless, maker of a conversation-recording pendant, in December 2025, and last month unveiled the Muse Charm, a keychain-sized device for its Muse AI agent that’s set to ship this December.
Bee also competes with startups such as Plaud, Omi and Friend, which make AI recorders and pendants that listen to conversations, and with AI notetaking apps such as Granola and Otter that work on a phone, with no extra device required.
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