Apple's new Watch Series 12 includes "Audio Intelligence" features, notably Live Rewind and Siri Recap, which allow the device to process and transcribe nearby conversations without requiring consent from everyone involved. Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have criticised the move, arguing that bystanders have no practical way to consent or opt out, potentially breaching all-party consent laws in several US states and eroding the spontaneity of everyday conversation.

Live Rewind, activated by double-pressing the Digital Crown, captures the last 15 seconds of audio, processes it via the Watch's Secure Exclave chip, and converts it to text on a paired iPhone before discarding the original recording; an audible tone and visual cue alert those nearby, though this does not equate to informed consent. Siri Recap works differently, generating high-level daily summaries of conversations without producing verbatim transcripts, retaining raw audio, or identifying speakers, and Apple presents this as a more privacy-respecting design. Eleven US states have all-party consent laws for recordings, and EFF privacy litigation director Adam Schwartz warned that "always-on monitoring of our conversations is an unacceptable burden on our conversational privacy," urging users to think twice before using the feature.