Apple is trying to get consumers to accept and even welcome the new reality that technology is always listening.
At Wednesday’s “Surprise and Shine” event, where the company announced its new hardware lineup, it turns out the real surprise wasn’t the foldable iPhone, but how the privacy-conscious tech giant decided its watches could now process live audio and transcribe what was said.
Does this mean that if the person you’re interacting with is wearing an Apple Watch, it will always be recorded? Not exactly, but some people might still find it annoying.
It also raises the question of whether consumers actually want this technology, or whether Apple has moved forward in this space out of fear that other companies, such as OpenAI, will soon introduce their own competing AI devices.
Many startups are now acting on the belief that AI-powered transcription is an important use case for consumer AI. So far, this has often involved transcribing meeting notes and recording lectures and interviews. Some companies, such as AI pendant Friend and Amazon’s Bee, are venturing into other areas with always-available AI companions that help you remember your day by passively taking notes.
Apple decided to take a slightly different path. With the new watches’ “Audio Intelligence,” “Live Rewind,” and “Siri Recap” features, the company is straddling the line between accessibility and practicality on the one hand, and what starts to feel like invasive technology on the other.
Audio Intelligence appears to be a useful feature in itself for the hearing impaired, as it uses on-device AI to alert Apple Watch wearers to sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, and babies crying. This works even when the wearer’s iPhone is not with them, and could provide life-saving assistance in some cases, such as when a fire alarm or carbon monoxide detector is triggered. No one would argue with this kind of audio AI.
However, Live Rewind and Siri Recap move out of the realm of assistive technology and into more obscure territory.
While Apple’s data protections may make these features more comfortable for some, there’s still a chance that standardizing listening technology may not be the best bet for privacy-minded companies. This is especially true given the widespread consumer backlash against surveillance technologies such as Flock cameras, AI data centers, and AI apps in general.
First, the Live Rewind AI feature lets you press the digital crown on your watch twice to move the time back 15 seconds and transcribe what you just said. This transcription can be saved in Apple’s new standalone Siri app, so you can revisit the information later.
Apple suggests that you can use this feature to remember things like “a book recommendation, a co-worker’s great idea, or something you didn’t hear the first time you heard it,” but essentially it also means you can catch and note down something someone said that you didn’t necessarily intend to record.
This has implications regarding consent, not only from an ethical perspective but also from a legal perspective. For example, AI device maker Plaud advises customers to obtain legally required consent before recording. Amazon Bee’s terms of service remind users that they, not Amazon, are responsible for complying with laws regarding data privacy for minors.
It’s unclear how the court system will handle these new text-only transcripts because Apple doesn’t preserve the audio. The notes could be introduced as evidence in court, but the lack of audio could make authentication and verification difficult. Additionally, the rules of evidence for its use may also vary from state to state.
Beyond legal issues, the idea that someone can record from your watch at any time has cultural implications.
Similar to social media and data surveillance culture, research shows that recording devices are already influencing people’s real-life behavior. Knowing that you can be recorded at any time has a negative impact on how you interact with others and how you express yourself.
However, recording photos and videos requires very obvious actions on the recorder’s part. You need to pick up your phone and point it in the direction of the action. According to Apple, simply pressing the Digital Crown on your watch to snap a snippet of audio and turn it into a transcription is probably a much more subtle gesture, even if it comes with a chime sound or a full-screen microphone animation.
Another new Apple Watch feature, Siri Recap, uses ambient listening to take notes on conversations that can be viewed in the Siri iOS app. These notes automatically generate titles, summaries, and key points based on what is recorded and summarized by AI. This is not an exact transcription.
Apple suggests this could make sense, for example, to record key points from meetings or important information from parent-teacher conferences.
The company also tried to assure users that it is working on these listening features with respect for user privacy.
Apple points out that Siri Recap isn’t always on by default like other AI wearables. Instead, you can choose when to enable it, such as only at work or only during the day. Additionally, you can turn this feature off or on at any time from Control Center.
In particular, it points out that Apple does not create or store audio recordings, and even Apple does not have access to the raw audio. We also do not identify or attribute speakers and protect generated transcripts and summaries with end-to-end encryption.
Whether it’s enough so that consumers don’t find the feature creepy is another question. Either Apple has found the right balance between practicality and privacy, or it’s about to face a consumer backlash.
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