Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4's controversial AI features are going live

Apple unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 back in September, along with a set of microphone-based features it calls Audio Intelligence. Two of them, Sound Recognition and Music Recognition with Shazam, were available from the start, but the more controversial pair had to wait. Now, Live Rewind and Siri Recap are arriving as part of the first watchOS 27.3 developer beta.

Apple Watch Series 12

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Apple Watch Ultra 4

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Live Rewind shows what was said in the last 15 seconds as a text snippet on your watch when you double-press the Digital Crown. That could be a waiter listing the daily specials, or directions you didn't quite catch. You can then ask Siri about the snippet or save it to the Siri app. If you do neither, it disappears about 30 seconds after the display dims. Using it plays an audible chime, even in silent mode or with headphones connected, and shows a full-screen animation and a microphone indicator, so people nearby know it's been triggered.

Siri Recap goes a step further and ambiently takes notes on your conversations throughout the day. After a conversation, it generates a title, a short summary, and key points in the Siri app's Recaps tab. It's not a transcript, and it doesn't attribute anything to specific speakers. Apple says it's also designed to leave out sensitive information such as financial data and government-assigned identifiers. Recaps are deleted after seven days unless you save them, and you can export them to Notes or Journal too. You can schedule Siri Recaps by time and location (for example, "only at work" or "never at night"), and turn them on or off at any time from Control Center.

Apple promises it doesn't ever create any audio recordings. Raw audio goes into a hardware-isolated Secure Exclave on the S11 chip and on the paired iPhone, where the operating system, apps, you, and even Apple can't access it. Live Rewind is processed on-device. Siri Recap sends a condensed version of the conversation transcript to Private Cloud Compute, which creates the summary.

Both features are thankfully opt-in. They require a Series 12 or Ultra 4 paired with an iPhone 16 or newer (except the iPhone 16e) with Apple Intelligence and Siri AI. They only work in English for now, with more languages to follow, and they're off-limits for users under 13. Unsurprisingly, they won't initially be available in the EU, since Siri AI isn't available there yet. The public beta should come next, before these features roll out to everyone.

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