Apple Watch's new AI features are normalizing the idea that technology is always listening | TechCrunch
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Apple says its new watches won’t save raw audio, but features that can transcribe recent speech and summarize ambient conversations raise new questions about consent, privacy, and how people behave when they know they could always be recorded.

With its new watches’ “Audio Intelligence,” “Live Rewind,” and “Siri Recap” features, the company is straddling the line between accessibility and utility on one side and what starts to feel like invasive technology on the other.

“Siri Recap,” uses ambient listening to “take high-level notes” of your conversations, which can be reviewed in the Siri iOS app. These notes will automatically generate a title, summary, and key points based on what was recorded and summarized by AI.

  • Ghoelian@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    I doubt those things are phoning home at all. Constantly or regularly recording and sending the audio to a chromecast or whatever would drain the batteries pretty quick.

    • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.socialEnglish
      31·
      23 hours ago

      Constantly, yeah. But the idea that the potential is there and can theoretically be used against you at any time without you being able to stop it is the concern. What if there’s a backdoor, for example?

      I’m not particularly paranoid, but to have an increasing number of devices & gadgets with this potential is naturally going to make a lot of people uncomfortable.