Halo? No thanks! Talk about 'must avoid' technology

Sometimes - but certainly not always - when I come in, all sweaty from my daily walk, I glance at myself in the mirror in my building's foyer. Even though I am not wearing the "minimal, tight fitting" clothing that you need to use the Halo "yo, fatso" app, I can tell through my sweaty old tee shirt and baggy old khakis that I have a muffin top. Walking five miles a day does nothing to offset it. COVID snacking doesn't help, either.

So I won't be using the new Halo fitness device from Amazon, thank you. The Halo is kinda-sorta like the Apple Watch, but it doesn't have FDA approval, so "it doesn’t count as a medical device."

But the Halo and Amazon’s $4 per month service attempt to use artificial intelligence to be a more “comprehensive” wellness guide — and that’s where things get weird. The Halo can’t track your weight on its own, but it asks you to take photos of your body (wearing minimal, tight clothing) with its app so it can estimate your body fat percentage. A motivational slider in the app shows you what you would look like if you lost weight. (Source: WaPo)

I spend plenty of money on frivolous, useless stuff, but that'll be the day I'll pay Amazon $4 a month for some AI app to tell me that I'm a bit girthy. Let alone to show me what I'd look like if I lost weight. I know what I'd look like if I lost some weight. I ain't never going to be svelte, but I do know that I'd look less dumpy. So why shell out good money when I can take care of both of these needs for the low, low price of FREE.

And, lord knows, I don't want an app that's going to monitor my tone.

Amazon says understanding emotion is key to overall health, so it uses AI to analyze “energy and positivity” in a customer’s voice recorded from microphones on the band. (It knows your voice, as opposed to those around you, by making a profile of you speaking.) Amazon says tone results may, for example, “reveal that a difficult work call leads to less positivity in communication with a customer’s family, an indication of the impact of stress on emotional well-being.”

Well, duh!

As it happens, given my long tenure in marketing in the tech industry - think of me as being tech-adjacent - I know something about AI, and have had over the years a couple of clients in this arena.

So, years ago, I did some writing about voice analytics. 

Occasionally I'd wonder whether, at some point, someone I was working with was going to be listening in on a recording of, say, customers interacting with an IVR (interactive voice response) system for customer service and they'd recognize my voice. Of course, it wouldn't take much by way of intelligence - artificial or other wise - to analyze the sentiment of the voice of one screaming into the phone "Human! Human! HUMAN! I want to talk to a HUMAN BEING!"

And you don't need AI to let you know when you're sad, mad, irritated, chirpily happy. You just know. And, again, you know for the low, low price of FREE. But if I were to subscribe to the app so I could get my tone analyzed, at least it's comforting to know that Amazon is not going be be judgy:

Amazon spokeswoman Molly Wade said its tech does not make “judgments” about tone, but determinations such as “friendly,” “hesitant” and “overwhelmed” sure sound like judgments to me.

Me, too. 

Technology has just gotten to be way too intrusive. I'm saying thanks, but not thanks, to the invasion of the body fat and tone of voice snatchers.