Apple has started rolling out the most debated parts of its Audio Intelligence feature set through the watchOS 27.3 developer beta, Tech Advisor reported. The artificial intelligence (AI) driven features were announced for the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4, and of everything shown for the two devices, they drew the most discussion. Audio Intelligence works as an umbrella term for several capabilities, including Music Recognition, which acts as an automatic song identifier and has not raised much concern. The attention has gone to two other abilities that rely on the watch listening in the background, and their appearance in a developer beta suggests that Apple intends to move ahead with them.
The first of those features is Live Rewind, which lets users catch something that was said in the last 15 seconds if they missed it during a conversation. The second is Siri Recap, which provides summaries of conversations a user has had throughout the day. They serve two different purposes, one for a quick replay of a recent moment and the other for a longer summary of the day, but both involve the Apple Watch listening at all times in the background. That concept has not been warmly received by many people, largely because of the privacy concerns it raises for the wearer and also for the people who are speaking near them without knowing that a watch is listening.
Apple has been keen to stress that the audio is not stored and cannot be accessed in any way. The company has also said that Siri Recap summaries are deleted after seven days unless the user chooses to save them. These assurances are aimed at reducing worries about how the recorded information is handled, though the debate around always-listening features is likely to continue as more people try them. It will still be a while before the features reach a public version of watchOS 27, since the developer beta is meant for testing, and Apple can change or adjust the features before a wider release depending on the feedback it receives from developers and early users.
The appearance of Audio Intelligence in the beta shows that Apple has not been dissuaded by the concerns that were raised after the announcement. Only time will tell whether the features become popular, but their arrival on an Apple Watch suggests that competitors may soon try similar ideas of their own. For now, rival wearables are taking a different path. Samsung has focused on health and fitness tracking for its latest wearables, with new measurements such as Vascular Load and Daily Cardio Load on the Galaxy Watch 9 and the Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. The contrast shows how smartwatch makers are exploring different directions, with Apple leaning toward AI assistance that works from ambient audio while others place greater emphasis on health data.
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