Apple Doesn’t Want You to Worry About the New Apple Watch’s Listening Features
The new Apple Watch includes several “intelligent” listening features that have privacy and security baked in. But the protections can’t change the facts of what the tools do.
Apple announced on Wednesday that its new smartwatches come with four opt-in "audio intelligence" tools. These tools use microphones to gather audio and include sound and music recognition, a conversation recap feature, and Live Rewind. The company stresses that all features are designed with privacy and security in mind, utilizing Apple's infrastructure to protect other Apple Intelligence and Siri services.
The tools process data locally on the device whenever possible, avoiding the need to send sensitive information to the cloud. Apple's S11 chips include a memory-protected space called the Secure Exclave, which holds and processes audio data in a secure environment. A new Shazam feature listens for music and generates a signature of a song, which is stored in the Secure Exclave and sent to Shazam's servers for identification if the user requests it.
The recap feature, known as Siri Recap, can continuously generate recaps of substantive conversations or operate on a schedule. If speech is detected, the audio is encrypted and transmitted to the user's iPhone for transcription and generation of a minimal transcript, which is then deleted from both devices. Live Rewind allows users to ask for a text version of the last 15 seconds of audio in their environment, with an audible chime alerting others in the area to protect privacy.
Written by urgent.news from Wired's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
