Google’s Nest starts listening while you sleep

Google says it honed the technology by studying 15,000 sleeping people over a combined 110,000 nights  

Credit: Google

Google says it wants to listen to you while you’re sleeping to make sure you get a good night’s rest. 

The tech giant today unveiled a new Nest Hub, a 7-inch smart screen which includes sensors that can track a sleep when placed on a bedside table.

The feature, which Google intends to offer for free through at least this year, relies on a new chip Google calls Soli, which uses radar to detect motion, including the depth of a person’s breathing.

The Nest Hub is supposed to generate weekly sleep reports with easy-to-understand breakdowns on the length and quality of sleep, how frequently the user gets up at night and snoring and coughing frequency, along with tips developed in consultation with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Google says it honed the technology by studying 15,000 sleeping people over a combined 110,000 nights

The Nest Hub can also display pictures and video in addition to fielding questions and handling household task through Google’s voice-activated assistant. It doesn’t feature a camera.

Despite this, the sleep feature may raise privacy concerns given Google’s long history of online surveillance to collect personal details such as interests and habits, to help sell the digital ads that generate most of its revenue.

The company may also eventually tweak the feature to work with its Fitbit line of fitness devices, which Google took over in January. That $2.1bn  purchase has raised concerns that Google could use those gadgets to peer more deeply into people’s personal health.

Google said privacy has been built into the new sleep feature. For instance, users will have to turn it on themselves. The Nest Hub will also have controls that Google says will make it clear when sleep tracking is on and to make it easy to delete data from the device.

All audio will be kept on the device, meaning it won’t be sent to Google’s data centers, although other sleep information will be provided to generate the analysis and reports.

None of the information collected through the sleep sensing feature will be used to sell ads, said Ashton Udall, Google Nest’s senior product manager.

Google isn’t the only one hoping to track sleep.  In January, it was reported that Amazon is developing an Alexa-powered radar device that can track and monitor for signs of sleep apnea.