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DAVE ROSS

New Amazon Halo fitness device gets personal by measuring your body fat

Aug 28, 2020, 12:41 PM

Amazon explorer, Seattle City Council...

(Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

(Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

Fitness devices have come a long way from the basic pedometers people would clip to their belt and then lose while jogging. The latest fitness device from Amazon is called Halo, and it appears to do everything.

鈥淎bout the only thing it does not do, yet, is test for COVID-19,” Todd Bishop of GeekWire told Seattle’s Morning News. “鈥 It’s essentially a series of sensors and small processors that allow you to do things like measure your body fat, and assess the intensity of your workouts. So this is not just a step counter.”

Another feature will actually “analyze your tone of voice to assess whether you’re being energetic and positive enough in your conversations with the people around you,” Bishop added.

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The feature that measures body fat has some concerned, since little is more private than one鈥檚 body fat index, and visuals are used.

鈥淪o that works by taking a picture of you and essentially using AI to analyze your appearance and get a body fat assessment from that. And you can imagine the privacy concerns 鈥 Amazon’s response to that is that all of this processing and analysis of your tubbiness — my tubbiness, I鈥檒l speak for myself — is happening on the device. It’s not going out over the cloud,鈥 he said.

鈥淎mazon is not using this to determine which size pants they recommend for you during the next order,” Bishop added. “That’s what they say, at least, and that really is the big concern here. I mean, no one would want a picture of themselves in their underwear out on the internet. Well, most people wouldn’t. I don’t. But when you get into ad targeting, that’s when it gets creepy.鈥

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You can’t actually rush out and buy these right away, you have to ask to buy them.

鈥淚’ve asked Amazon for the privilege of being able to buy one,鈥 Bishop joked. 鈥淪o that’s how they’ve been rolling out these experimental products: You basically apply to be able to buy one as a consumer.鈥

During the trial period, if you are able to get in on the early access, it’s $64.99. Eventually, the cost will be $99.99 for everyone else. But to get access to all of the advanced features, you also need to sign up for a $4 a month Halo membership.

Listen to Seattle鈥檚 Morning News weekday mornings from 5 鈥 9 a.m. on 成人X站 Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the聽podcast here.

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New Amazon Halo fitness device gets personal by measuring your body fat