Kerry Wan/ZDNETZDNET’s key takeaways
- Apple unveiled Audio Intelligence features on the Apple Watch.
- These features listen to you to identify sounds or summarize information.
- They’re contentious already but indicate Apple’s broader AI wearable strategy.
Apple didn’t release AirPods with cameras this year. Rumors ahead of Apple’s iPhone event suggested that potential release would be its first definitive foray into AI wearables. But a small feature it unveiled alongside the Apple Watch could point to an AI wearable future it’s building toward.
All the Audio Intelligence features
Apple added a few intelligent upgrades to the latest Apple Watch lineup at its annual iPhone launch event on Wednesday.
This includes a sound recognition feature that listens for important sounds someone would need to hear (alarms, sirens, and babies crying) and alerts the person on the smartwatch. The feature is built for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
There’s also a new Shazam feature on the watch that I saw in action, and it recognizes a song more quickly without the processing lag. To do this, the microphone on the Apple Watch is seemingly always on, processing the past few seconds of language, discarding it when a user doesn’t act upon it, and then interpreting it to detect a song title when Shazam is activated on the Apple Watch.
Apple takes that functionality and applies it to the next feature, Live Rewind. If, say, you’re having a conversation with a friend and zone out for a bit, you can now ping your watch to activate Live Rewind, and a transcript of the past 15 seconds will appear on your watch. Then, users can send whatever was captured to the Siri app to revisit it, send it to Notes, look something up, or learn more about it later.
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Siri Recap goes one step further. This feature is turned on for longer meetings, and it provides a summary of important details and discussion points. These features can’t identify speakers, and they are not automatically enabled on the watch. Neither Siri Recap nor Live Rewind creates a transcript — they’re made more for helpful moments and glanceable notes.
Siri Recap and Live Rewind are end-to-end encrypted through iCloud. Through the S11’s Secure Exclave, which isolates this audio capture on the chip, audio can’t be accessed by Apple and is auto-deleted almost immediately.
These features fall under Apple’s new Audio Intelligence umbrella, which it unveiled Wednesday, and won’t be available for a few months. “Just as Visual Intelligence makes sense of what you see, Audio Intelligence makes sense of what you hear,” said Ron Huang, Apple’s VP of sensing and connectivity, during Wednesday’s keynote.
Apple’s sneaky approach to AI adoption
Though powered by Audio Intelligence, these features feel helpful and convenient first and artificially intelligent second. This seems to be Apple’s approach to AI: Create a tool that helps you remember what someone just told you, summarize a meeting, help someone who is hard of hearing identify a baby’s cry, or detect a song quickly, and make it as convenient and seamless as possible so that somebody forgets they’re using AI.
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AI devices that listen, see, and take notes for you aren’t the most popular products among the public right now. Meta’s smart glasses, which include cameras and microphones, discreetly record videos, and take photos, are so unpopular that people have begun calling them “pervert glasses.” Concerns over privacy and surveillance take center stage with every release of an AI device that listens and sees.
Apple’s measured and tactful delay in rolling out an AI-powered Siri — or unveiling smart glasses of its own this year — follows a broader script I’ve noticed in its AI adoption efforts.
If the Apple Watch’s Audio Intelligence features are any indication of Apple’s long-term AI plan, it looks like the company will be infusing AI into already established products, like the iPhone, AirPods, or smartwatches, at least in the beginning. That gives users enough time to grow accustomed to the principles of AI products — that they’re always on, that they’re doing things on the user’s behalf, and that they’re eliminating friction and helping someone remember something they would have forgotten otherwise.
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Then, once people have become more comfortable allowing their smartwatches to listen in and assist them by identifying a song or sound, repeating what was said to them in conversation, or summarizing a meeting, they might be willing to buy another AI-powered device, whether that’s AirPods with cameras or Apple’s own version of pervert glasses.
Apple is starting with small touches to test its users’ general sentiment toward AI. This strategy could prevent a greater surveillance and privacy backlash when it goes big with an AI-powered wearable of its own in the next few years.
