Watch out: Apple timepiece can grab snippets of conversation without both speakers' consent

With the release of Apple Watch Series 12, Apple has decided that it's ok to capture people's conversations without their consent.

The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. 

"Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary [PDF]. "Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later."

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With the double-press of the Digital Crown – as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch – Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user's nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded. 

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The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. 

Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording – to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone – have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.

Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation.

Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later."

This too, Apple describes as an act of respect.

"By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."

The implication here is that Apple's non-consensual audio processing is less contemptuous of the public than the middle finger Meta has raised with its AI Glasses. That may be the case, but privacy advocates are still not impressed.

"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 Electronic Frontier Foundation privacy litigation director Adam Schwartz in an email to The Register. "Otherwise, people will self-censor, and conversation will lose its spontaneity and intimacy.

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"So, EFF is disappointed that Apple is releasing a new Audio Intelligence feature that reportedly can create a transcript or written summary of what people are saying in the vicinity of an Apple Watch. People don't really have a practical means to consent or decline recording.

"We suggest people should think twice before using this technology, out of respect to the conversational privacy of others. While it remains to be seen how state eavesdropping laws will apply to this new technology, it is clear that always-on monitoring of our conversations is an unacceptable burden on our conversational privacy." ®