The Bee, Limitless and Plaud wearables record everything you say and use AI to provide summaries, to-do’s—and a slightly terrifying glimpse of the future
Bee、Limitless 和 Plaud 等可穿戴设备会记录你说的每一句话，并利用 AI 生成摘要、待办事项——以及对未来略显可怕的一瞥。
I’ve been wearing a wire everywhere since February.
自今年二月起，我到哪里都像是带着窃听器。
I’ve got all the transcripts: important meetings, arguments with my kids, chats with disgruntled employees, late-night bathroom routines. There’s plenty more that I can’t share if I want you (and my bosses and my family) to keep liking me.
我拥有所有的文字记录：重要会议、与孩子的争吵、与心怀不满的员工的闲谈、深夜的洗手间日常。如果我想让你（以及我的老板和家人）继续喜欢我，还有很多内容无法分享。
No, I’m not an FBI informant. I willingly wore a \$50 Bee Pioneer bracelet that records everything I say and uses AI to summarize my life—and send me helpful reminders. I also tested two similar gadgets: the \$199 Limitless Pendant and the \$159 Plaud NotePin. These assistants can recall every dumb, private and cringeworthy thing that came out of my mouth.
不，我不是 FBI 线人。我是自愿佩戴价值 50 美元的 Bee Pioneer 手环，它会记录我说的每句话，并利用 AI 为我的生活生成摘要——还会给我发出贴心提醒。我还测试了两款类似的小玩意：199 美元的 Limitless Pendant 和 159 美元的 Plaud NotePin。这些助手能回忆起我口中蹦出的每一句愚蠢、私密和令人尴尬的话。
Is this the dawn of the AI surveillance state? Absolutely. Is it also the dream of hyper-personal, all-knowing AI assistants coming to life? Also absolutely.
这是 AI 监控时代的黎明吗？绝对是。这也是无所不知、极度个性化的 AI 助手开始成真的梦想吗？同样是。
Within hours of wearing the Bee, I was blown away at how quickly it turned ramblings and random chatter into useful, actionable information. Yet, allow me to quote myself from Feb. 24 at 5:15 p.m.: “This bracelet is really f—ing creepy.”
在戴上 Bee 的几个小时内，我就被它能把胡言乱语和随意闲聊迅速转化成有用、可执行信息的能力震惊了。然而，请允许我引用自己在 2 月 24 日 17:15 所说的话：“这个手环真他妈的吓人。”
How they work
它们如何运作
For years, we’ve been told there’s no way social-media apps are secretly listening through our phones’ mics to target ads. Picking up all that audio? Too hard! Processing it? Too intensive! Storing all the data? Too much!
多年来，人们一直告诉我们，社交媒体应用不可能偷偷通过手机麦克风监听来投放广告。采集那么多音频？太难！处理那么多数据？太耗资源！存储？太占空间！
Yet both the Bee and Limitless do that, with small microphones that listen for voices—particularly your voice. When they detect dialogue, they stream the audio to your phone via Bluetooth, then to company servers where it’s transcribed. AI models take the transcription and generate summaries, which appear in the apps within minutes.
然而，Bee 和 Limitless 都做到了。它们内置小型麦克风，专门捕捉人声——尤其是你的声音。一旦检测到对话，就通过蓝牙将音频传输到你的手机，再上传到公司服务器进行转录。AI 模型接过文字稿生成摘要，几分钟后就会出现在应用里。
The Bee doesn’t save the audio after transcription; you can’t listen back to anything that’s been said. Limitless keeps the audio, letting you play back full recordings.
Bee 在转录后不会保存音频；你无法回放已说过的话。Limitless 则会保留音频，让你可以完整回放录音。
Both have physical buttons to quickly cut the mics. The Limitless displays a small light when recording. The Bee only shows a red light when it’s not recording. Nothing says “Don’t worry, it’s off” like the universal symbol for recording! The company says a coming update will reverse this, so you see a light when it’s listening.
两款设备都有物理按键可快速关闭麦克风。Limitless 在录音时亮起小灯。Bee 则只在不录音时显示红灯。没有什么比“正在录音”的通用符号更能让人安心地说“别担心，它关着呢”了！公司表示即将发布的更新会反转这一点：只有在监听时才亮灯。
With multiday battery life, they capture big stuff—that important pitch meeting—and minutiae, like finding your missing TV remote under the dog.
凭借数天的电池续航，它们既能捕捉重大场合——那场关键的推介会，也能记录琐事，比如在狗身下找到丢失的电视遥控器。
Plaud is different: It’s a meeting assistant you manually start and stop, then decide if you want to create an AI transcript and summary.
Plaud 则不同：它是一款会议助手，需要你手动开始和停止录音，然后再决定是否要生成 AI 文字稿和摘要。
How they’re helpful
它们如何帮忙
AI is nothing without data. When you feed it everything you’ve said for days, weeks and months, it gets infinitely more useful. Also, yes, it becomes a lot like a “Black Mirror” episode, but we’ll get to that.
没有数据，AI 就什么都不是。当你把几天、几周甚至几个月里说过的一切都喂给它时，它的用处会呈指数级提升。当然，是的，它也会变得像《黑镜》的一集，我们稍后再谈。
With massive transcripts of your life, the AI in these apps can:
拥有你人生的海量文字记录，这些应用里的 AI 可以做到：
• Summarize: These apps recap your conversations, often reading like a bad biography. Bee summary from April 9: “Joanna’s day was a blend of familiar responsibilities and intense professional engagements…She ended the day listening to music by Sting.” Riveting stuff. Can’t wait for the movie adaptation.
• 汇总：这些应用会回顾你的对话，经常读起来像一本糟糕的传记。Bee 在 4 月 9 日的摘要写道：“乔安娜这一天融合了熟悉的责任和紧张的职业活动……她以听 Sting 的音乐结束了这一天。”引人入胜啊。电影改编我已经迫不及待了。
The transcriptions themselves aren’t all that accurate but the summaries usually are. Well, except for March 24: “Conversation with Johnnie Cochran about trial evidence.” Yep, just a casual chat with a deceased celebrity lawyer. (I was watching the new O.J. documentary.) Ethan Sutin, co-founder and chief technology officer of Bluush, Bee’s creator, says a recent update has improved the ability to tell recorded voices from real, living ones.
文字转录本身并不总是准确，但摘要通常挺靠谱。嗯，除了 3 月 24 日那次：“与约翰尼·柯克伦讨论审判证据的对话。”没错，只是随便和一位已故名律师闲聊而已。（我当时在看新的 O.J. 纪录片。）Bee 的创始公司 Bluush 的联合创始人兼首席技术官伊桑·苏廷表示，最近的更新改善了区分录音中人声真伪的能力。
• Remind: Turns out, I promise to do a lot of things without putting them on a to-do list. Bee listens for action items and adds them to a suggested list. It’s repeatedly reminded me of important tasks, like calling the plumber or following up on work stuff. But it also hilariously adds things I’d never put on a list, like “check in on your sick son” or “schedule a follow-up with your hair stylist to discuss your haircut.”
• 提醒：事实证明，我经常答应做许多事情却没写进待办清单。Bee 监听到行动项后会把它们加入建议列表。它已经多次提醒我一些重要任务，比如给水管工打电话或跟进工作事项。但它也会搞笑地加入我绝不会写进清单的事，比如“关心一下你生病的儿子”或“约发型师复查你的发型”。
• Analyze: Both Bee and Limitless have chatbots so you can ask about your recorded life. I asked Bee for a detailed breakdown of my cursing habits. (Daily average: 2.4 curses.) But it can be genuinely helpful. “Look through my chats with Ethan from Bee and tell me what AI models it uses.” The answer: a combo from Anthropic, Google and Meta.
• 分析：Bee 和 Limitless 都配有聊天机器人，你可以询问关于自己录音生活的问题。我让 Bee 详细统计我的爆粗口习惯。（日均：2.4 次。）但它也确实有用。“查看我与 Bee 公司伊桑的聊天，告诉我它使用了哪些 AI 模型。”答案：Anthropic、Google 和 Meta 的组合。
How they’re creepy
它们为什么让人毛骨悚然
Feb. 23, 5:15 p.m., in conversation with my mom: “This bracelet has nothing to do with fitness. It records everything that’s being said.”
2 月 23 日 17:15，与我妈妈聊天时：“这个手环和健身毫无关系。它记录正在说的一切。”
Nobody I talked to over the past few months would have known I was recording them, if I hadn’t told them. It’s a little fun, like I’m a low-budget Ethan Hunt. Mostly, though, I just felt like a creep.
在过去几个月里，如果我不告诉他们，没人会知道我在录音。这有点像我在扮演低成本的伊森·亨特，大多数时候我只觉得自己像个变态。
And, depending on the state, I might have been breaking the law.
而且，根据所在州的不同，我可能还违法了。
Most of my recordings were in New Jersey and New York, which are one-party consent states. Only one person—me—had to agree to the recording. But if I were in one of about a dozen states that require two-party consent, I’d need permission from everyone in earshot or end up with a possible civil-liability case.
我大多数录音发生在新泽西和纽约，这些都属于单方同意州。只需要一个人——我——同意录音即可。但如果是在大约十几个要求双方同意的州，我就必须得到所有听到的人许可，否则可能面临民事赔偿。
“I would make sure everyone has consented verbally,” says Ashton Kirsch, a lawyer with Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer, which maintains a state-by-state list of recording laws. While the risk might be low, he adds, “we could never recommend people take that risk.”
“我会确保每个人都口头同意，”来自 Matthiesen, Wickert & Lehrer 律所的律师阿什顿·柯施说，该律所维护着一份按州划分的录音法律列表。他补充说，虽然风险可能不高，但“我们绝不会建议人们冒这个险。”
Yet the most unsettling part was realizing the soundtrack of my life was stored on some companies’ servers. Sure, much of our identities are already in the cloud—photos, health records, etc.—but normally, we have some control over what’s there and how it’s stored.
然而，最令人不安的是意识到我的人生配乐被存放在某些公司的服务器上。没错，我们的身份信息早已大量存在云端——照片、健康记录等等——但通常，我们对那里的内容和存储方式还有一定掌控。
The creators of Bee and Limitless say they encrypt your data, delete recordings when you delete conversations or your account, and don’t train AI models on the feeds. They also say they don’t sell your data to advertisers; they get revenue via hardware and subscriptions sales. Plaud doesn’t sell data either.
Bee 和 Limitless 的创始者表示，他们会对你的数据进行加密，当你删除对话或账户时删除录音，并且不会用这些音频来训练 AI 模型。他们还说不会把你的数据卖给广告商；他们的收入来自硬件和订阅。Plaud 也不出售数据。
Bee’s makers are also testing on-phone AI processing. I tried it out. It wasn’t nearly as good.
Bee 的团队也在测试本地 AI 处理。我试过，效果远不如服务器版。
So, should you bug yourself—and everyone else—just for convenient to-do lists and daily summaries? For now, that privacy trade-off doesn’t seem worth it. But as these AI assistants get more helpful and more humanlike, all bets are off.
那么，仅仅为了方便的待办清单和每日摘要，你要不要监听自己——以及所有人？就目前而言，这种隐私交换看起来并不值得。但随着这些 AI 助手越来越有用、越来越像人，一切都难以预料。
Besides, it’s only a matter of time before this always-on recording is baked right into our existing smartglasses and smartwatches. Just remember to mute before you hit the bathroom, OK?
况且，随时录音迟早会被直接植入现有的智能眼镜和智能手表中。记得进浴室前把它静音，好吗？