Apple’s new watches are always listening

Apple Watch features that continuously listen, transcribe and summarise conversations are raising privacy and social concerns despite Apple’s encryption safeguards. Critics argue ambient listening violates contextual integrity, as people nearby cannot consent, potentially making smartwatches unwelcome in workplaces and other confidential settings

Melbourne: The latest Apple Watch models have some new features: they can listen to the sounds around you all day, transcribe snippets of conversation on demand, and write up summaries of everything they heard.

This kind of ambient, always-on surveillance raises privacy concerns, which Apple addresses well. The company says audio is never “recorded” or stored, that nothing is attributed to any speaker, and all content is encrypted so even Apple cannot read it.

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I have no reason to doubt any of that. But my reaction to these features is still clear: ick.

I’m not the only one who feels that way, and the ick deserves to be taken seriously. Let me explain why.

The conversation belongs to the room

The new features may run into problems with privacy laws, particularly those that require consent from people being recorded, but also with unspoken social conventions about speech.

When we talk with other people, we have some expectations about what happens to our words. Our comfort comes from what information scientist Helen Nissenbaum calls contextual integrity: the expectation that information moves around according to the norms of the setting in which it is shared.

What you say across a cafe table, in a bathroom, at a dinner party, at a town hall meeting or during a television broadcast is said for the people present and for the purposes apparent in that moment. Until now, our ambient conversations were not said for a auto-magical-summariser to fold into someone else’s searchable life records.

Apple can encrypt, minimise and delete all it likes, but data protection isn’t the problem. The problem is a conversation has been quietly re-routed from the room where it happened into a device and service and product.

‘Opt-in’ doesn’t work for everybody

These features are marketed as “opt-in”. But only the person wearing the Apple Watch gets to opt at all. Nobody else in the room has a choice.

Apple seems to know this is a problem, so Live Rewind – which transcribes the previous 15 seconds of speech on demand – announces itself with a chime, an animation and a microphone indicator.

Siri Recap, the feature that runs all day and makes on-device summaries later, affords no such notice. You can see how a continuous chime and blinking light would make the feature unusable, and any watch unwearable.

In places where confidentiality is expected – whether for personal, commercial, or legal reasons – devices with ambient recording features are likely to be unacceptable.

Right now, the Apple Watch is welcome anywhere, like AirPods. The new features may change that – and the cameras Apple reportedly plans to add to AirPods may do the same for the now-ubiquitous earphones.

Meta’s video-recording smart glasses have already been banned in some workplaces and venues. The media often frame the problem with individual users, as with Meta’s so-called “pervert glasses”, but the tech industry has earned public distrust in its own right.

It’s the trust, stupid

Tech companies have a reputation for misusing user data. One study of 14,000 apps found almost half violated their own privacy policies. Another study of almost 6,000 children’s apps found most may have been in breach of privacy law.

Norms about ambient recording are already being set by other devices.

Meta’s smart glasses are one, and a recent crop of AI pendants and pucks are in similar territory. These devices and services have broken integrity expectations (and privacy laws) again and again and again and again.

Surveys show most people already think their phones are listening to what they say in order to serve them ads. The irony of introducing a similar feature to everyone’s wrist should not be lost on Apple.

Nor are they unfamiliar with the need to get it right. The company paid out US$95 million to settle a court case in 2025 over claims that Siri activated by accident and sent private audio to contractors, but did not acknowledge wrongdoing and maintains their focus is privacy.

A private way to record your day?

Apple is handling privacy in ways that are demonstrably better than others. Apple’s Private Cloud Compute, which powers the new features, is built so the company’s own staff cannot read what passes through it. The servers keep no logs and retain nothing after a user’s answer is returned.

Apple has promised to publish the software used in each Private Cloud Compute instance, so independent researchers can check it works as described.

So, Apple’s privacy policy and software experience is backed by hardware open to inspection. It shows a precedent that others can follow. Seen in this way, the Rewind and Recap features demonstrate that always-on listening can be done without giving the data to anyone but the user.

Apple products have set social precedents in the past, as well. The iPod changed ideas about music piracy, and AirPods made it okay to have weird white sticks hanging out of your ears at all times.

The socialisation of Apple tech is not guaranteed, however. The futuristic Vision Pro goggles launched in 2024, for example, are still not cool.

Nope is still a choice

Despite Apple’s efforts, the basic problem of a device that is always listening in public remains. It still violates our expectations about the integrity of a conversation belonging to the room.

The ick feeling about Recap and Rewind comes from what Apple is actually selling: a new default understanding that a conversation is something that may be casually captured, analysed and used elsewhere by others.

Apple is one of the most credible companies to ask us to accept that new default. Which is why those saying “nope” to breaking the contextual integrity of our conversations should be heard. If we don’t want that kind of tool in our lives –  or the lives of others – we need to say it out loud: ick.