Apple’s new AI features for Watch Series 12 raise eavesdropping concerns

Apple just gave its wristwatch ears. And not everyone is comfortable with that. The company’s new Apple Watch Series 12, announced September 9 at its “Surprise and Shine” event, ships with a suite of features Apple calls Audio Intelligence. The headline tools: Siri Recap, which passively listens to conversations and generates AI-powered summaries, and Live Rewind, which lets users double-press the Digital Crown to pull up a transcript of the last 15 seconds of audio. The watch starts at $399 and begins shipping September 18. Apple insists the features are private by design. Legal experts aren’t so sure. How Audio Intelligence actually works Both features run on the new S11 chip, which includes a component Apple calls the Secure Exclave. Raw audio is overwritten on the spot, never saved as a recording. What remains are brief text summaries or transcripts, stripped of speaker attribution. Siri Recap can be toggled on manually or scheduled for specific times, like a morning standup or a doctor’s appointment. It filters out content Apple deems sensitive before generating its summary. Live Rewind, meanwhile, works more like a dashcam for sound: it captures a rolling 15-second buffer tha...