Apple is launching an all-new set of features called Audio Intelligence, starting with today’s new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4. The company details how the new feature works, especially around privacy, in a new paper.
Live Rewind and Siri Recap also let you easily enable or disable the feature as needed.
Each Audio Intelligence feature is opt-in, Apple says.
How Audio Intelligence is designed to work with privacy in mind
Interestingly, Apple explains in the paper how Live Rewind works with privacy in mind: Live Rewind Audio from the microphone flows into the audio buffer inside the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip. Old audio is continuously replaced by new audio, so audio doesn’t accumulate, and raw audio isn’t accessible outside this protected buffer. And for the Siri Recap feature, here’s part of Apple’s explanation on how it works: The S11 chip uses a lightweight AI model to determine whether speech is occurring nearby. This model doesn’t transcribe or record anything. It simply detects whether a conversation has started. If a conversation is detected, audio flows into a protected buffer inside the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip.
It is isolated in hardware so that it is inaccessible to the user, the operating system, apps, and even Apple.
Live Rewind only activates when you deliberately double-press the Digital Crown. It doesn’t continue to transcribe in the background, nor does it save the text unless you choose to ask Siri about the content or save it to the Siri app. It only shows the last 15 seconds of speech as a text snippet on your display.
You can turn it on through the Watch app on iPhone — just open the Watch app, tap Siri, then tap Live Rewind and turn on “Double Click Digital Crown”.
