Four new features
Apple has opened its AI-powered Audio Intelligence features for Apple Watch to developer beta. First available with the iOS 27.3 update, the technology runs on Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4.
- Sound recognition: Detects important sounds such as sirens, alarms and doorbells and alerts the user; aimed at users who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Song recognition: Uses Shazam integration to identify the name and artist of music playing nearby.
- Live Rewind: Double-pressing the Digital Crown transcribes the last 15 seconds and shows it on the watch screen; users can save it to Siri, and unsaved text is deleted after 30 seconds.
- Siri Recaps: Instead of a verbatim transcript, it creates a short summary and bullet points covering dates, deadlines, prices and payment plans; notes can be exported to Notes or Journal.
Privacy measures
Apple says Siri Recaps does not identify speakers, does not store raw audio and does not produce verbatim transcripts. Audio data is passed through the S11 chip and secure memory on the watch to the paired iPhone; the transcribed speech is encrypted and sent to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, and the data used is deleted from the cloud once the summary is generated.
Users can enable Siri Recaps manually or schedule it for specific times, and can turn it off from Control Center. Summaries that are not saved are automatically deleted within seven days. Apple aims for the features not to affect battery life.
What's next
The features, now in developer beta, are planned to enter public beta and then roll out to all users after testing.
