Latest Apple Watch Can Grab Snippets of Conversation Without Both Speakers' Consent (theregister.com) 64
Apple's new Audio Intelligence features for the Apple Watch Series 12 are drawing privacy concerns because they can process nearby conversations without explicit consent from everyone involved. "Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text," Apple explains in its technical summary (PDF). "Siri Recap summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later." The Register reports: The latest Apple Watch comes with Audio Intelligence, a set of AI audio processing capabilities tuned for the company's S11 chip. Its features include: Sound Recognition, Music Recognition with Shazam, Live Rewind, and Siri Recap. [...] With the double-press of the Digital Crown -- as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch -- Live Rewind takes in an audio stream from the Watch microphone, processes it in a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, and routes the data to the user's nearby iPhone, which runs a speech-to-text algorithm on the 15-second audio segment. The resulting text is saved and the audio is discarded.
The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording -- to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone -- have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.
Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation. Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later."
This too, Apple describes as an act of respect. "By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."
The wearer's Watch emits an audible tone, even in silent mode, to alert those in the vicinity and provides a visual cue for those able to see the face of the device. Nonetheless, bystanders alerted to the recording -- to the extent they recognize the meaning of the tone -- have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.
Apple characterizes its implementation of brief eavesdropping as respectful of personal privacy. It makes that claim in a section titled, "How Live Rewind respects those around you," citing the audible chime and visual on-screen animation. Siri Recap, meanwhile, "summarizes conversations throughout your day and produces high-level Apple Intelligence-generated notes so you can stay present in the moment and catch up later."
This too, Apple describes as an act of respect. "By design, Siri Recap does not create a recording, does not produce a verbatim transcript, and does not identify and attribute speakers," Apple's technical documentation explains. "The output is a brief, high-level summary, comparable to notes a person might write after a conversation. There is no audible signal because no raw audio is retained, and there is no way to reconstruct the original audio from a Siri Recap or share raw audio with anyone."
Accounting for Gen.. *buffering * (Score:2)
"Live Rewind lets you instantly see the last 15 seconds of a conversation as text"
I take this is supposed to be the feature to help those who perpetually suffer from
* buffering *
* buffering *
"Wait..wut?"
(Yeah. That stupid shit.)
Re:Accounting for Gen.. *buffering * (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. That would require these people to be able to read and understand. Not sure that works.
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this feature has "Israel energy" which is not good when literally Israel is making the chips
iConsent: Not Included (Score:5, Interesting)
A Secure Exclave is not a permission slip. Apple's protections for raw audio deserve credit. Turning those protections into a claim that everyone nearby has been respected is where the engineering ends and the marketing starts.
Apple's own privacy paper describes Siri Recap transcribing speech on the iPhone, condensing that transcript, and sending the condensed text to Private Cloud Compute. The final output is a summary. That distinction matters, but it hardly makes the conversation disappear. Deleting the waveform does not delete the information extracted from it.
Live Rewind works on the preceding 15 seconds of buffered audio and sounds a chime when activated. A chime cannot travel backward in time to ask permission. Siri Recap provides no audible signal at all, with Apple pointing to the absence of retained raw audio as the justification. Apparently, whether you deserve a heads-up depends on the output format.
The article should also dial back the legal certainty. Consent laws have different scopes and exceptions; "11 states" is not a substitute for examining the applicable law and circumstances. But Apple's choice of terminology does not settle the question either.
The useful distinction is between protecting information after collection and respecting someone's choice about collection in the first place. Apple describes substantial safeguards for the former. The wearer's opt-in does not establish the latter for everyone else.
If your definition of respecting my privacy allows you to silently turn our conversation into saved AI notes, your definition needs more work than your microphone.
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In California, if there's a reasonable expectation of privacy (such as within your own home), recording without permission is a felony.
Re:iConsent: Not Included (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait to see how many places ban this Apple Watch entirely. First, there's no way this is legal in two-party consent states, and I don't care how Apple tries to re-define "record."
Secondly, I don't think anyone really cares how secure Apple says "Private Cloud Compute" is, no one is going to trust that a device that's designed to "listen" (but not "record") every conversation in the vicinity isn't "recording" especially when it can produce an AI summary of a conversation.
There's no way this Apple Watch will be allowed in government buildings or anywhere else that people may not want to be recorded, no matter Apple's privacy claims. I expect to see "No Apple Watch Allowed" signs start appearing all over the place once this releases.
Re:iConsent: Not Included (Score:4, Insightful)
They may just be testing the waters in the US. If they try to even market that thing in the EU then they are very stupid.
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I think the infographic they put out said that the "always listening" features were not available in the EU and China. Although honestly I don't see how anyone can trust the hardware when the "always recording conversations" features are part of the SIP.
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Interesting, thanks for the info. It is a sad time when China has better privacy protections in place than the US.
Well, you probably can trust the hardware for regular use enough. And for other things, I have been in meetings several times where everybody left all electronic devices outside and that was a decade ago or so. You can still do that today, unless people start implanting this crap.
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It is a sad time when China has better privacy protections in place than the US.
wooosh. only the CCP are allowed to spy in China.
Re:iConsent: Not Included (Score:4, Insightful)
How terrible, not like the free USA where the only ones who can spy on you are the NSA, FBI, CIA, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Flock...
Re: iConsent: Not Included (Score:2)
Don't forget LG! Their TVs are listening to you when you're in a different room!
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You must be one of the stupid. Because "Government spying on you" is clearly better privacy protections than "Government and corporations spying on you". Requires understanding that "better" is a relative comparison and does not imply "good". I guess you lack that insight.
Re: iConsent: Not Included (Score:2)
What are you talking about? M$ Teams Transcript feature is not only available and being used even in executive meetings, some companies are forcing it onto employees.
So this is just one click of consent away, even in EU.
A sad reality, really.
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And how would somebody not wearing that device do that click and get the information that is required for the "informed consent" needed? Right. I guess the Teams scenario is too complex for you to analyze.
Re: iConsent: Not Included (Score:2)
It seems rezachi and their reply has you vastly outsmarted, maybe some AI would help you to catch up to the discussion!
Re: iConsent: Not Included (Score:1)
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A chime cannot travel backward in time to ask permission.
Even more so, as in the EU that would need to be informed consent, including all storage locations, any algorithms applied to it, any decision-making and everybody that gets access and all they might be doing with it. The GDPR basically tries to make complex use scenarios and selling the data impossible. Oh, and consent under the GDPR can be with drawn later for something like this and you then need to delete everything. So anybody activating such a mechanism must be willing to give ID and contact informati
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Be honest, was your comment generated by AI? Because it reads exactly as if it were.
Re: iConsent: Not Included (Score:2)
Be honest, was your comment generated by AI? Because it reads exactly as if it were.
Prompt: Return the word no.
No.
Yeah⦠so? (Score:2, Interesting)
So can Pocket, that little AI device advertised as transcribing and summarizing meetings. What is your point?
Re:Yeah⦠so? (Score:5, Insightful)
So can a regular phone. Or a tape recorder. Any recording device, in fact.
Re:Yeah⦠so? (Score:5, Insightful)
Other recording devices do not constantly record on their own, waiting for you to give them the instruction to do so after they do the actual recording. That is what it seems the spyWatch is doing.
This is illegal in many states. Apple is demonstrating the modern corporate position of "breaking the law is not illegal if a corporation decides it will make money doing it".
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Is Ring portable, and you take it with you?
Re: Yeah⦠so? (Score:1)
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Yeah, lots of them do. Your phone probably does, unless you have Siri/Google/whatever turned off. So do your Echos, Homes, Alexas, OnStars etc.
Anyway, I doubt any of the laws say anything about "constantly."
Here's California's:
Re: Yeah⦠so? (Score:2)
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Yeah but Apple doesn't care. If you record someone in a public place, the onus is on you. You can't sue a tape recorder manufacturer for illegal recordings.
That said, Apple is treading close to the line. Once they start doing this without the user's consent, then they should be liable.
EM (Score:4, Funny)
We're going to need personal EM field generators.
Great (Score:4, Interesting)
I just got a Pebble watch, which I like. And likely doesn't do this kind of shit. (it seems a little under powered to pull it off)
But now I feel like people are going to be suspicious around anyone with a smart water.
That said, if more people knew what a MEMS microphone looked like, and how cheap they are. They would not be talking around any electronics. Many of the raspberry-pi knock off boards I've bought have some kind of microphone on them, one had two rice grain sized ones. Maybe that's cool for some use, and it's certainly handy to have more peripherals on a cheap development board. But if a $35 board can have them included basically for free, then we can assume that anything with a battery or internet connection has one.
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If you just want the blank capsule, something like a Panasonic WM-61B102B is just $2 or so and pretty spectacular. (Caveat: I am not a musician...) Like you whisper on one side of the room and get a clear recording on the other. Getting a mic based on that capsule is more like $100 and up and at least some of that is justified for the amplifier and case. But if you put it in some existing device, it gets a lot cheaper.
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That said, if more people knew what a MEMS microphone looked like, and how cheap they are. They would not be talking around any electronics. Many of the raspberry-pi knock off boards I've bought have some kind of microphone on them, one had two rice grain sized ones. Maybe that's cool for some use, and it's certainly handy to have more peripherals on a cheap development board. But if a $35 board can have them included basically for free, then we can assume that anything with a battery or internet connection has one.
The Orange Pi also have them. Or more a miniature regular one. I do not remember since I removed them. But yes, a voice-grade microphone is like $0.10 and a suitable input is already present in many 32 bit and above MCUs. Not very good recording hardware is indeed often basically free to add these days.
Negatively biased article (Score:5, Insightful)
as evident by the quote "the Digital Crown -- as Apple grandly refers to the button on its Watch". The term crown has been used, for who knows how long, to refer to the knob on the side of a watch. Either the writer has no knowledge of watches, or is intentionally making Apple appear "grandiose". Yes, Apple has it's issues, but when an author slants an article, you don't know the reliability of the rest of what they have written.
Re: Negatively biased article (Score:3)
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"The term crown has been used, for who knows how long,"
This isn't actually a refutation of the claim that Apple's usage or the term is grandiose. It would be a refutation of a claim that Apples usage is original, but no one made that claim.
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You have to understand that most journalists end up in that job either because they're political activists who want to push a Narrative or because they can't hold down a real job.
So no, most of them have no idea what a 'crown' is on a watch.
My nearly ten-year-old Apple Watch has a microphone in it so it could be recording all the time for all I know. I don't really have a problem with this if I'd have to press the crown twice to trigger it, unless it accidentally gets pressed while shagging or something.
creep glasses, creep watches, creep TVs (Score:4)
I hate the future.
Welcome to the machine... its alright we know where you've been.
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Yep. Assholes getting rich (or richer) enabling creepy people. Not good.
Precious Privacy (Score:2)
Listening to a podcast recently, there was an ad for "Plaud", which is apparently a small device that records audio, and using AI, can be used to list the action points from a meeting, etc. The ad noted that you can asking it about meetings in the past.
There was a recent post on Slashdot about Flock cameras, and the backlash from people who dislike them.
With the spread of all these devices that record audio and video, it is going to become quite difficult to "opt out" of being recorded for privacy reasons.
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> This expectation of privacy in public spaces is extremely new.
Not, it's not. Thirty years ago people could do things in public and know that people who didn't know them wouldn't know who they were and it was highly unlikely that people would be filming or recording them (and if they were then it was pretty obvious as cameras and tape recorders were still quite large).
It's only that last 20-30 years that people have decided that they have the right to record everything you do and make it available to th
Adversarial noise (Score:2)
There are methods to add noise patterns to audio that are imperceptible to humans but cause AI to go apeshit, such as misidentifying rock music as classical or transcribing speech as something completely different from what is said.
I wonder what the practicalities might be to deploy this form of attack in an area around you when having a conversation you with to keep private. Probably would not be inaudible when played through a speaker (unlike data implanted in audio recordings) but maybe masked? Listen to
Most gadgets do (Score:1)
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Laptops? No. Unless you explicitly record or have some voice-command software running (or some malware that captures), the mic is off. Same for phones.
Hence illegal to use in the EU (Score:2)
And illegal to sell or own in Germany.
You would think that Apple has at least one EU data-protection lawyer on staff. Apparently not. Or they are testing things out.
This is Pearl-clutching (Score:1)
Italy allows registrations (Score:2)
In Italy it's allowed to register conversations, if at least one of the persons involved gives consent. That's why it's legal to install an app on the phone which registers all phone calls by default. Unfortunately Google decided that Android doesn't allow apps which have access to phone-calls. So Apps like callrecorder do not work anymore.
from a legalese/practical standpoint (Score:2)
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In Colorado, too. Only one party to the conversation needs to be aware of the recording for it to be legal.
An implication: recording people who don't know about it -- illegal.
Pretty amazing (Score:1)
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That Ternus has had the CEO job for just over a week and is already flushing any good will Apple had down the toilet. "Lake America," this BS, etc. I've liked and used many Apple prdoducts in the past, including a series 9 watch. I will not be upgrading based on this kind of crap. Oh, and the $2000 phone. Get real. Very disappointed in the company.
You think this was John Ternus’ Decision?
You obviously have no idea how Corporate Boardrooms work.
You’ve been watching too many Trump Cabinet Meetings!
Just turn it off (Score:2)
Siri Recap runs only when you choose. You can turn on Siri Recap in the Watch app on iPhone. When you turn it on, you can set a schedule based on time and/or location (for example, "only at work" or "never at night"), or you can manually turn it on and off. Across all these options, you can always turn it on or off at any time from Control Center.
If it is illegal, don't use it. If you find it unacceptable to record and transcribe, don't use it. This isn't some new never before seen tech, there are programs that let you record audio on the watch already, and they keep an entire conversation not just a transcript.
Just like everything else (Score:1)
It sure is ALARMING that Apple's watch is exactly the same as every other device, without exception, which includes a microphone.
Is society ready for things not changing by one iota? Or should we panic?
I don't care (Score:2)
> have not consented to being recorded, which is a legal requirement in 11 US states that have all-party consent laws.
Do we all have to comply with the lowest common denominator? Perhaps some thinks it's the hugest, but it certainly doesn't have jurisdiction everywhere.
Maybe some kind location-based jurisdiction AI is in order.