A U.S. Patent Office diagram from Amazon.
The gadget, meant to be worn on a person's wrist, is reportedly a health and wellness product developed via a collaboration between Lab126 - which built Amazon's Echo smart speaker - and the Alexa software team.
According to internal documents obtained by Bloomberg and a person familiar with the matter, the device has microphones that can figure out a person's emotional state from the sound of his or her voice. The documents also apparently show how the technology could eventually assist the wearer in interacting more effectively with others.
A beta testing program is reportedly underway, but it's not clear whether the project, code-named Dylan, will ever become a commercial device or exactly how far along the project is in its development, reported Bloomberg.
When Fox News reached out to Amazon for comment on Thursday, a spokesperson said the tech giant "does not comment on rumors or speculation."
The business outlet also reported about a US patent filed in 2017, but made public last year, for a system in which voice software uses analysis of vocal patterns to decode how a person is feeling, discerning among a range of emotional states, including joy, anger, sorrow, sadness, fear and disgust.
A diagram in the patent filing says the technology can detect an abnormal emotional condition and shows a sniffling woman telling Alexa she's hungry. The digital assistant, realizing that she has a cold, then asks the woman if she would like a recipe for chicken soup.
Amazon, of course, is not the only tech company pursuing the possibilities for health and wellness with wearable devices.
The Apple Watch has been called life-saving for its ability to detect irregular heartbeats.
Reader Comments
It used to be that accurate detection of another's emotional state was called maturity because experience and knowledge is rarely the province of the turnip truck crowd...although the people who think such a machine is necessary are either the computer crowd, for whom maturity and analog thinking is a distant wish, or psychopaths or both.