The New Apple Watch Listening Features Feel Weird

So you got an Apple Watch to track your steps and heart rate. Now all your friends are afraid you’re taking notes on their conversations.

The latest Series 12 Apple Watch model, announced at the company’s big September event, includes new AI listening features. Apple is calling them “Audio Intelligence.” They’re convenient and cool, but also a little … weird. They also strike me as very un-Appley.

The two features that caught my eye are called Siri Recap and Live Rewind.

Siri Recap can be set to always listen, or just for certain hours of the day (or not at all). The AI recaps are available upon request in Siri, and will be a recap of what the mic on your Apple Watch heard — not the full audio clip or transcript.

The examples Apple gives for what you could use this for include remembering high-level moments from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference.

Live Rewind gives you a transcription of what was just said in the last 15 seconds. You can then send the transcription to Siri to save for later.

In the example they give, a server speeds through the daily menu specials — relatable! That’s always a challenge to remember. A quick double-tap to the watch’s crown, and you can see the list of menu items she just rattled off.

The other examples they give for using this are remembering book recommendations from a friend or a great idea your colleague just had. You can send the transcript to Siri to look at later when you want to remember that book or great idea.

Convenient!

A world where our watches are listening feels weird

But in both cases, I’m not sure the convenience fully offsets how strange I would feel knowing I’m walking around with an always-on listening device.

Technically, it’s ambiently on, and there are some general privacy functions. Apple emphasizes that audio is not recorded or stored, and raw audio isn’t accessible to you or even Apple. It doesn’t label individual speakers’ voices to identify them. The recap summaries are stored in Siri with end-to-end encryption.

But even so, something here feels … off. It means if I’m talking to you and you’re wearing an Apple Watch, you might be getting a recap of our conversation sent to Siri to look through later. That feels weird!

Apple is far from the first to test our appetites for AI listening features. AI note-taking apps and devices like Plaud or Granola have become popular in the workplace to help you remember what was said in a meeting. Great! That limited use case for work-related audio seems useful. Granola even has an Apple Watch app — it turns the screen bright green, which is a decent indication for others in the room that someone is using it. (Live Rewind makes a chiming noise along with a “full-display animation and microphone indicator” to alert other people that you just turned it on, but Siri Recap doesn’t.)

Apple Watches are everywhere

People wear their Apple Watches all day, every day, and a lot more people have Apple Watches than Plaud devices.

They wear their Apple Watches on dates, at the doctors’ offices, in dark bars and school classrooms, while having sex (gotta get those steps in), sitting next to you on the subway, gossiping with friends, complaining about their boss with colleagues, arguing with their spouse, doing drugs, discussing trade secrets, or yelling at their kids to finish their homework. Look, I don’t know what you do with your time, and I don’t want to.

Yes, you can turn this off. Yes, someone could already be recording you on their phone at any time. Yes, these note-taking recap apps/devices already exist. Yes, it doesn’t store raw audio recordings of you, and yes, it has some privacy features like end-to-end encryption.

But there is something very different about all this.

Apple Watches are everywhere — I am wearing one right now, so are several people in my office, and plenty of my friends and family. I don’t feel like an eavesdropper wearing an Apple Watch. Unstylish, maybe, but not creepy.

That all might change if the culture zeitgeist feels that wearing an Apple Watch turns you into an AI-powered eavesdropper.