AI 的核心承诺之一是，它对个人了解得越多，就能越好地帮助其完成任务并提供恰当的建议。如果相信科技公司所说的话，这意味着应用和设备会一直监听、观看或记录用户的活动，并收集所有可能的上下文。
One of the core promises of AI is that the more it knows about a person, the better it will be able to assist them with tasks and make appropriate suggestions, which, if you’ll believe the tech companies, apps and devices to listen, watch or record users’ activity all the time and gather all possible context.
显然，持续收集关于你的数据会带来隐私和数据安全方面的担忧。但初创公司仍然不受影响地在构建此类应用，认为个性化助理的市场足够大，能够吞噬这些顾虑。
There’s obviously privacy and data security concerns with anything that’s collecting data about you continuously. But startups are building such apps undeterred anyway, arming themselves with the belief that the market for personalized assistance is big enough to swallow such concerns.
前 Plaud 高管 Peter Mo 正在打造 Ambi，目标类似。该应用旨在通过始终监听用户，为人们提供实时情报和洞察。
Former Plaud exec Peter Mo is building Ambi to do something similar. The app aims to provide real-time intelligence and insights to people by listening to them all the time.
该公司周一表示，已在多个融资轮中筹集了 2600 万美元，领投方为 Luminous Ventures——该机构曾投资美团、Unitree Robotics 等公司，以及原始设计制造商华勤。
The company said on Monday that it has raised $26 million across multiple funding rounds led by Luminous Ventures, which has backed companies like Meituan and Unitree Robotics, and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) Huaqin.
Ambi 还将推出 iPhone、Mac 和 Apple Watch 版应用。这些应用类似会议记录员，用户可以选择让其持续监听，以便全天捕获上下文。
Ambi is also releasing apps for iPhones, Macs and Apple Watch. These apps act like meeting note-takers, but users can choose to have them listening so they can capture context all day.
会议记录公司一直在努力自动化通话结束后的任务，依据在对话中收集的摘要和行动项，并通过大量连接器对接软件系统。Ambi 希望更进一步，让其代理人在会议进行时就开始工作。
Meeting note-taking companies have been working to automate tasks that follow once calls are done, based on the summaries and action items they gather during the conversation, and using multitudes of connectors to software systems. Ambi wants to take this a step further by having its agent start the work during the meeting itself.
该公司的承诺是，其 AI 代理人能够在会议期间，根据你的日历、会议、知识库和网络数据，主动提供建议或呈现相关知识。用户还可以在一台设备上启动任务，然后在另一台设备上继续。
The company’s promise is that its AI agent can proactively give you suggestions or surface relevant knowledge while you are in a meeting, based on your calendar, meetings, knowledge base, and web data. Users can also start a task on one device and continue it on another.
“我们与智能的互动方式受到限制。通常情况下，智能被困在屏幕上，如果你使用像Plaud这样的硬件，需要等待录音传输到手机、上传到云端，然后经过处理才能获得智能。这就是我们正在构建Ambi的原因，以便随时随地使用AI，”该公司的联合创始人兼首席执行官Mo对TechCrunch表示。
“The way we interact with intelligence is limited. Often the intelligence is trapped on the screen, and if you use hardware like Plaud, you need to wait for recording to transfer to the phone, upload to the cloud, and get intelligence after processing. That’s why we are building Ambi to use AI anytime and anywhere,” the company’s co-founder and CEO, Mo, told TechCrunch.
该公司有雄心捕捉更多信息。其即将推出的桌面应用将能够查看用户的工作内容，并将重要部分存储在其内存中，以提供更个性化的建议。像Littlebird或Minimi这样的应用已经在做类似的事情。
The company has ambitions to capture more information. Its upcoming desktop app will be able to look at the work that users do and store important parts in its memory to give more personalized suggestions. Apps like Littlebird or Minimi already do something similar.
该初创公司还计划推出自己的硬件设备，该设备将配备屏幕、扬声器、摄像头和麦克风，以捕捉上下文并显示信息。
The startup is also planning to launch its own hardware device, which will have a screen, a speaker, a camera, and microphones to capture context and display information.
隐私问题 Ambi的推出正值人们对那些缺乏足够指示器以暗示其正在捕捉用户周围人员数据的AI设备的担忧日益增加之际。目前尚不清楚Ambi的应用或其即将推出的设备是否具备足够的指示器来提醒第三方，如果用户未披露其使用Ambi的技术，他们的对话正在被录制。
Question of privacy Ambi’s launch comes amidst growing concerns around AI devices that don’t have enough indicators to suggest they are capturing data on people around the user. It is not clear if Ambi’s apps or its upcoming device will have enough indicators to alert third-parties that their conversations are being recorded if the user doesn’t disclose their use of Ambi’s tech.
一些会议记录工具甚至因其技术在未经同意的情况下录制了人们的对话和数据而被起诉。此外，苹果最近推出的Voice Intelligence功能——该功能能够持续转录语音——也引发了隐私担忧。
Some meeting note-takers have even been sued because their tech recorded people’s conversation and data without their consent. Plus, the recent release of Apple’s Voice Intelligence feature, which transcribes speech continuously, has raised privacy concerns.
Mo表示，用户可以在任何时候关闭Ambi应用和设备上的环境数据捕获功能，且该功能默认处于关闭状态。该初创公司表示，它不会存储用户的任何录音，并对数据进行加密，但未具体说明使用何种加密方式。尽管采取了这些措施，声明环境捕获的责任仍在于用户。他将此归类为一个行业性问题。
Mo said that users can turn off ambient data capture on Ambi’s apps and devices at any time, and the feature is off by default. The startup said it doesn’t store any recordings of users and encrypts the data, but it didn’t specify what kind of encryption it uses. Despite these measures, the onus of declaring ambient capture is still on the users. He classified this as an industry-wide problem.
他说道：“我们必须通知用户，他们必须向他人说明环境捕捉。作为一个行业，我们尚未解决这个问题[披露]。我们已经尽力将披露信息放在所有可能的地方，但如果用户试图隐藏捕捉，我们也无法仅凭自身解决问题。”
“We have to inform our users that they have to tell others about ambient capture. We, as an industry, haven’t solved this problem [of disclosure]. We have tried to put the information about disclosure in every place possible, but if users try to hide the capture, we can’t just solve the problem,” he said.
Ambi目前在旧金山、北京、上海和深圳的办公室拥有超过50名员工。公司正在招聘市场推广职能人员以及从事语音识别模型工作的AI工程师。
Ambi currently has over 50 staff across offices in San Francisco, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The company is hiring for its go-to-market function and AI engineers for working on speech recognition models.