Apple faces legal risks due to "always listening" Apple Watch
The new Siri Recap feature in Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4, which can analyze conversations in the background and automatically create summaries of them, has raised questions among lawyers and privacy experts. In some jurisdictions, using such a tool without the consent of the people being recorded could potentially conflict with laws on wiretapping and recording private conversations.
This is reported by Bloomberg. The feature is part of a new group of Audio Intelligence capabilities introduced by Apple alongside the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4.
One of the main new features is Siri Recap. The user can allow the watch to analyze surrounding conversations throughout the day, after which Apple Intelligence creates a title, summary, and main points for them. The results can later be viewed in the Siri app. The feature can be enabled permanently, set to activate on a schedule, or only be initiated in specific locations.
It is the background nature of Siri Recap that has become the main topic of discussion. Unlike traditional recording on a smartphone, a person near the watch's owner may not know that the content of the conversation is being processed by the device and later turned into a text summary.
Brian McGinnis, a privacy and artificial intelligence lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg, noted that Siri Recap does not have a constant audible signal to alert other participants in the conversation. According to him, despite serious technical safeguards from Apple, the responsibility for informing others effectively lies with the device owner.
This could have legal implications in the United States, where rules regarding recording and intercepting conversations vary by state. Federal law generally permits recording with the consent of one party to the conversation, but several states have stricter requirements that require the consent of all parties for confidential communication.
The potential dispute is not limited to whether the device retains a full audio recording. For example, California law prohibits—without the consent of all parties—not only recording certain confidential conversations but also using electronic devices to listen to them. Since there is no case law directly defining the legal status of Siri Recap, experts speak of a potential risk rather than an established violation.
Apple claims conversations are not recorded
Apple emphasizes that Audio Intelligence technically does not create or store ordinary audio recordings. Sound goes into a temporary secured buffer in the Secure Exclave of the new S11 chip. According to the company, the operating system, apps, and Apple itself do not have access to the raw audio, and it is deleted after processing.
For Siri Recap, the watch sends encrypted data to the paired iPhone. There, speech is converted to text, after which the shortened version of the text may be sent to Private Cloud Compute to generate the final summary. Apple claims that data on its secure servers is not retained and is not accessible to the company.
Siri Recap also does not create a verbatim transcript and does not determine who among the conversation participants said what. Apple states that the system attempts to exclude sensitive information, including financial data and government identifiers, from the final notes. However, the company warns that the automatic filtering may not remove all confidential information.
If the user does not save the Siri Recap summary, it is automatically deleted after seven days. Saved notes are protected with end-to-end encryption when synced via iCloud.
Live Rewind has a different alert mechanism
The second new feature—Live Rewind—allows the user to double click the Digital Crown to get a text snippet of what was said in the previous 15 seconds. Unlike Siri Recap, when it is activated the watch sounds an audible alert even in silent mode, and a noticeable animation and a microphone indicator appears on the screen.
But even the presence of such a warning does not necessarily mean legally valid consent is obtained from all participants in the conversation. That is why privacy advocates believe that the proliferation of devices worn on people with the capability to analyze surrounding speech could create a new layer of disputes around privacy.
Adam Schwartz, director of privacy litigation at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the right to privacy in a conversation should include the option not to have one's words documented by other people's devices without explicit consent. The EFF has been critical of Apple's decision to release Siri Recap.
The features Siri Recap and Live Rewind are expected to appear in a beta version later in 2026 and will initially work only in English. Apple also notes that the new Siri AI will initially not be available in the European Union on devices with iOS, iPadOS, and watchOS.
