The fitness band has two built-in mics to capture audio and it listens for emotional cues. It can let you know when you've sounded out of line, weirdly enough. Halo also offers a Tone analysis, which has nothing to do with body tone, but rather analyzes the nuances of your voice to paint a picture of how you sound to others. The scan images aren't viewed by anyone at Amazon and aren't used for machine learning optimizations." Watch that tone! All scan images are fully deleted within 12 hours. According to Amazon, "the images are processed in the cloud, but encrypted in transit and processed within seconds, after which they're automatically deleted from Amazon's systems and databases. That's why Amazon promises that the finished body scans stay on your phone and won't be shared with anybody, including the company, unless you opt into that. The sample body-scan images Amazon showed me look very personal - not necessarily something I'd ever want anyone else to see.
Amazon doing this on a health platform makes it feel more so. If you're feeling uncomfortable, that's not surprising: The idea of body-scanning with a camera is already an awkward proposition. The entire process takes seconds.Īmazon's Halo app makes a 3D render of your body to analyze body fat, while the fitness band keeps tabs on sleep and activity. The app requires you to wear minimal form-fitting clothing and trust Amazon to take a picture of you wearing it. Once you take your photos, the app automatically eliminates everything else in the background, calculates body fat percent based on body indicators, and then creates a 3D model of your body, which is both cool and terrifying.
The Halo app does it all using your smartphone camera. The gold standard in the medical world for body composition analysis is a DEXA scan (dual-energy absorptiometry), which can cost up to $100 at a lab. Rather than relying on weight, Halo focuses on body fat percentage, which is less volatile and takes a lot more time and work to change. You could literally work your ass off building muscle and burning fat, and not see the numbers on the scale go down. Plus muscle is more dense than fat, and a scale can't tell the difference between the two. The entire diet industry was built on it with programs, apps and devices that revolve around ways to lose pounds.īut weight can fluctuate daily based on factors including humidity, medication, menstrual cycle and illness. Most of us have been conditioned to obsess over our weight. Body fat analysis with a smartphone cameraĪmazon thinks the concept of weight loss is flawed, and that body fat is a much better predictor of health.
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