Because just recording audio is illegal in two-party consent states. This may or may not be illegal, depending on how judges interpret “recording” vs AI transcriptions of ephemeral recordings.
Additionally, even in one-party consent states, doing that is creepy and weird. This makes it even easier for weirdos to be creepy and weird. It also sends the audio to a cloud platform to perform the AI transcription. That is new.
I’d err on the side of it being illegal in two consent states as well but I agree that hasn’t been litigated yet and there’s lots of bought and paid for judges.
It doesn’t actually send the audio to apple though, according to them it’s sent to the phone, transcribed and “condensed” there with that condensed transcription and some context being what is sent to their servers for summarizing.
"Siri Recap, the most interesting of the new features, stores a high-level summary of conversations throughout your day. The raw audio never leaves the Secure Exclave, but a condensed transcript of it is generated on-device and then sent encrypted to Apple’s servers running Private Cloud Compute, the same technology that powers their cloud AI features.
The claim is that Apple can’t access data sent to PCC, but the way the technology works at some point the data must be decrypted in order to be processed. This makes it distinctly less secure than purely on-device processing. Data is included about context like whether the speech was from a song, whether you were at an event based on your calendar data, and even some location information like your city, state, and country.
The summary is then sent back to your phone, encrypted, where it will be stored for 7 days unless you choose to save them."
That’s not new though, it also listens for Hey Siri all the time like all modern Apple devices have been doing for years. You can also still turn it off if it’s your own watch.
You’ve been able to just record audio with a watch forever now I don’t see how this is significantly worse than that.
Because just recording audio is illegal in two-party consent states. This may or may not be illegal, depending on how judges interpret “recording” vs AI transcriptions of ephemeral recordings.
Additionally, even in one-party consent states, doing that is creepy and weird. This makes it even easier for weirdos to be creepy and weird. It also sends the audio to a cloud platform to perform the AI transcription. That is new.
I’d err on the side of it being illegal in two consent states as well but I agree that hasn’t been litigated yet and there’s lots of bought and paid for judges.
It doesn’t actually send the audio to apple though, according to them it’s sent to the phone, transcribed and “condensed” there with that condensed transcription and some context being what is sent to their servers for summarizing.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/148354
https://www.privacyguides.org/news/2026/09/10/new-siri-recap-feature-for-apple-watches-can-create-summaries-of-your-conversations-throughout-the-day-apple-says/
"Siri Recap, the most interesting of the new features, stores a high-level summary of conversations throughout your day. The raw audio never leaves the Secure Exclave, but a condensed transcript of it is generated on-device and then sent encrypted to Apple’s servers running Private Cloud Compute, the same technology that powers their cloud AI features.
The claim is that Apple can’t access data sent to PCC, but the way the technology works at some point the data must be decrypted in order to be processed. This makes it distinctly less secure than purely on-device processing. Data is included about context like whether the speech was from a song, whether you were at an event based on your calendar data, and even some location information like your city, state, and country.
The summary is then sent back to your phone, encrypted, where it will be stored for 7 days unless you choose to save them."
Because I can tell it to record what I want when I want, not let it listen all the time. This fucking thing is a shackle now.
That’s not new though, it also listens for Hey Siri all the time like all modern Apple devices have been doing for years. You can also still turn it off if it’s your own watch.