Apple Watch Series 12 ships with Audio Intelligence, and The Register argues the feature quietly captures other people’s conversations.
The set, tuned for Apple’s S11 chip, includes Sound Recognition, Shazam music recognition, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. Live Rewind lets a wearer see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text. Siri Recap generates short notes summarizing conversations across a day.
For Live Rewind, a double press of the Digital Crown pulls audio from the Watch microphone, processes it in a secure enclave, and sends it to a paired iPhone that runs speech-to-text. The text is saved and the audio discarded. The Watch plays an audible tone, even in silent mode, to warn people nearby.
That is not consent. Eleven US states require all parties to agree before a conversation is recorded, and bystanders who hear the chime may not know what it means.
Apple frames the design as respectful, citing the chime, an on-screen animation, and the fact that Siri Recap keeps no audio and produces no verbatim transcript.
“Our right to conversational privacy must include freedom from other people, without our clear opt-in consent, using technology to document what we are saying,” said the EFF’s Adam Schwartz, who added that people should think twice before switching the feature on.
