E-commerce giant Amazon (AMZN) has made another move to secure its spot in the artificial intelligence (AI) future with its agreement to acquire Bee, which sent AMZN stock higher on Thursday. Bee is a company that sells an AI-powered wristband that is always listening. It transcribes a person’s every word and conversation, turning it into a database that can be searched with AI. This allows it to act as a digital assistant with the ability to create highlights from a day’s conversations and spoken musings.
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It makes sense that Amazon would take an interest in Bee. It already collects a large amount of user data through its Alexa devices, though it swears those aren’t always listening. With Bee, that would change. This could allow Amazon to integrate conversations collected by Bee to train AI models. That could help Amazon build personal assistants that have a deep understanding of users thanks to the wealth of data they would collect from the wearers’ personal lives.
Of course, Amazon and Bee have both stressed privacy, despite listening to every word. Even if it bothers users, this could raise privacy issues for those around them. That might even result in the devices being banned in some areas, similar to the pushback on wearers of Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Glasses, cynically nicknamed “Glassholes” by privacy-concerned individuals.
Amazon Stock Movement Today
Amazon stock was up 1.75% on Thursday, extending its 4.05% year-to-date rally. The company’s shares have also rallied 26.93% over the past 12 months. Some 21 million shares changed hands as of this writing, compared to a three-month daily average of about 40.24 million units.
Is Amazon Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold?
Turning to Wall Street, the analysts’ consensus rating for Amazon is Strong Buy, based on 44 Buy and a single Hold rating over the past three months. With that comes an average AMZN stock price target of $258.15, representing a potential 11.09% upside for the shares.
