Apple just announced a lineup of new products at its fall event, the first one to be hosted by newly minted CEO John Ternus. Along with the highly anticipated foldable iPhone, which we now know is called iPhone Duo, Apple also announced the Apple Watch Series 12, equipped with an AI-infused Siri that sounds like a privacy nightmare.
With the new release, Apple is hoping you are delighted to hear that your Apple Watch will always be listening to every conversation you have, and perhaps even recording some of them.
“Apple Watch is always on your wrist, and with Apple Intelligence on your iPhone, it’s the perfect device to help you stay aware of the sounds around you and keep track of your conversations,” Ron Huang, Apple’s VP of sensing and connectivity, said at the presentation.
Apple is mainly marketing this new ability through two key features: Live Rewind and Siri Recap. Both features rely heavily on Apple’s latest AI models, and the tech giant is introducing them under the name “Audio Intelligence” within the Apple Intelligence umbrella.
With Live Rewind, Apple Watch Series 12 owners who are, for some reason, too chicken to simply ask someone to repeat what they just said will be able to double-press the digital crown button to get a transcript of the last 15 seconds of any conversation.
“This is great for when you’re trying to recall a book recommendation, a colleague’s brilliant idea, or something you didn’t hear the first time,” Huang said.
The second feature, Siri Recap, uses ambient listening to capture summaries, key points, and other notes from a user’s daily conversations. Users can choose to have the Siri Recap feature always on, aka constantly eavesdropping, or set it to turn on at specific times each day.
Apple executives were eager to assure viewers and prospective buyers that privacy would be top of mind for Audio Intelligence. The raw audio will be “completely inaccessible, even to Apple,” Huang said, and the feature won’t identify or attribute the speakers.
But those privacy guardrails only address one part of the problem this new feature introduces.
Meta Glasses, another piece of consumer tech with creepy surveillance potential, have been quickly picked up by so many creeps that they have been widely dubbed “pervert glasses” online. The surveillance fears are so conspicuous with these smart accessories that, earlier this year, the NYPD counterterrorism unit reportedly warned in a memo that the glasses could be used for surveillance.
Although the buyers of this kind of technology, whether it be smart glasses or watches, may consent to their every move being monitored, the innocent bystanders that they record don’t necessarily give their blessing. It’s unnerving that anything you say out in public, perhaps without even realizing that you are in the vicinity of an Apple Watch wearer, could soon be covertly recorded, transcribed, or noted down.
Apple said in its press release that the Apple Watch will play an “audible chime” when Live Rewind is activated, so that people nearby can hear that they were just recorded and transcribed. But Meta Glasses also featured an LED light for that same purpose, and perverts and creeps were quick to circumvent the protection. Also, while the Live Rewind feature will have an audible chime, Apple did not specify if Siri Recap will have a similar function to let bystanders know their conversations are being fed into and summarized by an AI.
While Apple’s privacy record is pristine compared to Meta’s, it’s impossible not to think that the Cupertino giant could be in for a wave of public outcry when these features hit the market.
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