Apple Watch Audio Intelligence Enters Beta With Live Rewind

Live Rewind lets users catch up on something they missed in a conversation. Double-pressing the Digital Crown turns the last 15 seconds of speech into text on the watch screen. Users can save that text to the Siri app for later; unsaved text is deleted after 30 seconds. They can also ask Siri about topics they did not understand.

Siri Recaps summarizes conversations such as work meetings, parent-teacher talks or personal training sessions. Instead of a word-for-word transcript, it produces a short summary and key points, which can include dates, deadlines, prices and payment plans. Notes can be exported to Apple's Notes or Journal apps.

Privacy approach

Following recent debate over AI wearables recording surrounding conversations, Apple stresses privacy. The company says Siri Recaps does not identify speakers, keep raw audio or produce verbatim transcripts.

Audio is handled by the S11 chip and secure memory on the watch, then passed to the paired iPhone, where it is converted to text. The text is encrypted and sent to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, and the data used is deleted from the cloud right after the summary is created. Apple says only the user can access the summaries and that data is encrypted when synced between devices.

Users can turn Siri Recaps on manually or schedule it for certain hours, and switch it off at any time from Control Center. Summaries not saved by the user are deleted automatically after seven days.

Apple says it aims to keep the features from affecting battery life on the Apple Watch or iPhone. After the developer beta, the company plans a public beta, followed by a release to all users once testing is complete.