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At Wednesday’s iPhone Duo launch event, Apple announced a handful of new Siri AI Audio Intelligence features, including Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition. Alongside its announcement, Apple released a document laying out how it plans to balance AI “ambient listening” and users’ privacy. It says the raw audio from the new features “is handled within dedicated hardware, is not saved as a file, and is not accessible to the operating system, apps, or Apple.”
Apple explains that Audio Intelligence relies on the Secure Exclave in the S11 chip that powers the new Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4:
The S11 chip in Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 includes a Secure Exclave: a hardware-isolated compartment built into the silicon to process sensor data separately from the rest of the system. Data that is processed and analyzed in the Secure Exclave cannot be accessed by watchOS, apps, the user, or Apple. Audio from the microphone enters the Secure Exclave of Apple Watch, where it is initially processed for speech, sounds, or music, without transcribing or storing the raw audio. This buffer is a continuously overwritten stream that exists only within the protected hardware and never creates an audio recording.
Apple also says users control “whether and when” Audio Intelligence features are active — Live Rewind requires users to double-tap the Digital Crown every time they want to activate it. Additionally, if Audio Intelligence needs to be transferred to your iPhone, it’s transferred with encryption through both devices’ Secure Exclaves. Users also choose what text to keep from Siri Recap and Live Rewind, and text from Audio Intelligence will sync with end-to-end encryption if you have a device passcode and use iCloud’s two-factor authentication.