While watching Apple’s September launch event, the thing that stood out for me was not the iPhone Duo. Yes, Apple’s first foldable certainly generated lots of online chatter. But except for that slick unfolding animation, I wasn’t wowed.
Instead, I was stunned by the new Siri Recap and Live Rewind features in the new Apple Watch Series 12. The former can produce AI-generated summaries of your conversations while the latter shows a text snippet of what was just said from the last 15 seconds.
What this means is that the Apple Watch is constantly listening, and processing what it hears. From a privacy point of view, this sounds even worse than smart speakers and the AI assistants in smartphones, which are listening for a specific wake word. And it’s coming from Apple, a company that has always talked big about privacy and security.
Apple is keenly aware of the privacy implications. It goes out of the way to explain how users remain in control. Siri Recap and Live Rewind are part of the new Audio Intelligence suite of features, which are opt-in. Users can disable them at any time. Or in the case of Siri Recap, set a schedule for when it’s active and where it’s active. There’s no speaker attribution, no audio recording, and everything goes through a secure part of the Apple Watch’s chip that cannot be accessed by anyone. The Siri Recaps are auto-deleted after seven days, unless you export them. And when you do save them, they are encrypted when being synced across your devices.
There’s more. In fact, over half of Apple’s support page about Audio Intelligence covers these privacy guard rails. And while they sound good, the thing is, when these features roll out in beta later this year, the general public is being recorded whether they consent or not — as long as they are in range of Apple Watch users.
And you know not every Apple Watch user will be considerate of the privacy of others. It’s telling that Apple actually has to remind users “to be mindful of those around you”. Well, I’ll certainly be wary of talking about sensitive topics around an Apple Watch user from now on.
Apple adding these features to its smartwatches further normalises these ambient intelligence devices that are always on, always sensing, and always listening. Other firms may have fewer qualms about privacy. There are already plenty of them, usually powered by AI, out in the wild, many of which are even more intrusive. Like this AI camera that delivers an AI-generated summary of your day in comic form.
For now, Meta’s smart glasses are taking all the heat. The backlash is sufficiently serious that they are being banned from certain places, and the company is now introducing an audio-only version. Perhaps there will be a similar outcry about the Apple Watch when these features roll out. But the genie is out of the bottle. We’ll be seeing more of these devices, even if we didn’t ask for them.
This week, we tried out Sonos’ second attempt at premium wireless headphones, tested the Apple Watch Series 12 (no Siri Recap or Live Rewind yet), and was impressed by the battery life on the Honor X9e Pro smartphone.
The Sonos Ace Ultra fixes most of the issues with the audio brand’s original Ace headphones. Just about everything, from ANC to battery life to sound quality, has been improved in the new version. Meanwhile, Sonos users can enjoy a new feature to switch audio between their Sonos speakers and the headphones.
With a new, more accurate heart rate sensor onboard, the Apple Watch Series 12 is probably the biggest upgrade to Apple’s smartwatch in a while. The design, though, is mostly the same, but the glass is now rated at 60% tougher than before. The new sensor also enables new health metrics like heart rate variability, which can be used to judge your body’s physical and mental state.
If you’re looking for an Android smartphone that will easily last you two days, check out the Honor X9e Pro, which has a massive 11,000mAh battery. It’s also much better equipped to take knocks and bumps than most smartphones, including extreme scenarios like being submerged in hot soup or getting washed in the washing machine.