I’m not a fan of where this tech is heading, especially when looking at all of the companies who are pushing for it. I do think it’s somewhat misleading to say that Apple is opening the door when we’re already seeing things like the glasses from meta, the upcoming (maybe now released) glasses from Google, and the plethora of AI powered devices and pendants already existing and I constantly get served ads for. I believe pocket and plaud are the two I see the most. We’re seemingly getting closer to living in a black mirror episode every day.
I’m a little confused by how your comment relates to what I was saying. I’m not saying it doesn’t but I truly just don’t understand what you’re getting at.
I interpreted as Apple doesn’t have the incentive to spy on you as other companies do, since Apple isn’t an ads company, compared with Google and Meta.
But yes I agree with you also that this isn’t solely on Apple opening the door.
Apple is not even in the same ZIP Code as Meta or Google. When you buy a product from Apple, they get all of the information upfront from you to complete a transaction no different than any retail store. There is no cost of acquisition.
There is no need to endlessly spy and the same pretty much applies to Amazon, Google and Meta may have a file on you, but in order to have that file, they need to spy. in short there is a big cost of acquisition for them to open up that dossier on you.
Apple or Amazon, in order for you to buy something from you, you have to exchange information in order to complete the transaction, which is no different than any other retailer that you would ever do business with, that isn’t Google, and that isn’t Meta. not at their core. And don’t bring up the Me-Too hardware products that both companies try to sell from time to time. Those are just small side work in the big picture for them.
Yeah but the reason apple is doing it is because they have no more ideas for new features. These always on listening features are the best ideas they have.
> The S11 chip uses a lightweight AI model to determine whether speech is
occurring nearby. This model doesn’t transcribe or record anything. It simply
detects whether a conversation has started. If a conversation is detected, audio
flows into a protected buffer inside the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip.
It does record audio. A microphone is constantly receiving sound waves and writing them in a digital format in a particular audio file encoding as inputs to a model. That is a recording. I don’t see how this passes legal and doesn’t expose them to class action for false advertising.
What you're describing is listening, not recording. If the bits only exist transiently on the wire and are given only as streamed input to a time series binary classifier which emits a simple true/false signal and are not written to more permanent storage, then it's hard to see how anyone could call that a recording.
A human listens. A digital system cannot listen because it must always write the analog signals into a digital representation: a recording. When you call `model(last 10 min of audio)` that is a recording. I suppose a system could "listen" if it somehow took as input the actual electrical voltages from the microphone receiver.
This might sound pedantic but it is very nefarious to me that Apple is marketing a device as "never recording" when it is actually always recording. And this is a claim going back to Siri with wake words. Again, they claim it doesn’t record and I don’t see the logic there.
> I suppose a system could "listen" if it somehow took as input the actual electrical voltages from the microphone receiver
Ah, it feels like this may be the crux of the issue, because that's pretty much what uncompressed audio is. Every value in a WAV file roughly represents the displacement of the microphone diaphragm at time t.
> A human listens. A digital system cannot listen because it must always write
There are two issues with what you're saying, depending on what you mean by that:
1) Transmission isn't storage. When you talk to me you it would be unreasonable to say that your voice is being "recorded" in the air or in my eardrum or even necessarily in my brain, even though vibrations are in some real sense physically present across the air molecules and my eardrum is being physically displaced and my brain is doing...well...some unknown ephemeral aggregation in order to produce thoughts in my head from what you're saying. So if you transmit bits over a wire, and even if you have enough wires to represent bits from many time quanta, you should likewise not call those bits recorded by the same principle of innate ephemerality.
Bits on wire in audio stream at time t ~= position of your eardrum at time t. Neither are reasonably considered storage without persistence, which we have no knowledge of, and neither are reasonably considered on their own to be representations of what is being said.
2) You don't need to accumulate data to analyze it. You can, but you don't need to, and I don't think we know that they are.
You can think of a hash function. A hash function need not record its input stream. It need only record the accumulated influence of the input on the prediction. Storing a running statistical guess about whether you're talking and recording what you're saying are not the same thing.
Let's be real, they've been doing this for years ever since they introduced siri. By now everyone's had an experience similar to having a conversation about something without searching or typing anything into a digital device and then magically starting to receive targeted advertising about said thing.
A whistleblower revealed Apple were using a contracted sweatshop in Ireland to grade Siri recordings - although not for ads. They actually settled a class action for this just this year.
I’d be interested to know what the policy is on Watch 12 at Apple. A transcribing and summarizing watch in confidential meetings seems contrary to their security policy.
There are different science fiction books that talk about high tech 'dust' or other micromachines that otherwise exist almost everywhere in the world monitoring everything. While the exact imagined implementations may not work, I can't help but believe that micro technology could spell the end of most privacy. Humans simply exist on the wrong scale. Our voice, our actions all leave a large amount of entropy in the world to be picked up and monitored by things far smaller than we are and fed into larger networks.
"Audio Intelligence features are private by design, combining hardware, software, and services to protect user privacy in a way that only Apple can. These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. By design, Audio Intelligence features do not identify and attribute speakers, to protect the privacy of both the user and those around them. Siri Recap produces a brief, high-level summary of conversations — not a transcript — and is designed to exclude sensitive information like financial information or government-assigned identifiers. Live Rewind text snippets and Siri Recap summaries are end-to-end encrypted in the Siri app with iCloud syncing, and are not accessible even by Apple. Read more about how Audio Intelligence protects privacy:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632685
Nothing relate to defend Amazon and Apple don’t need to dig in the trash like Meta and Google to generate a file on someone like Meta and Google. There is no cost of acquisition.
I see people focusing a lot on the negatives here. But let's consider what this means for the future of jobs. It will be easyer to understand what is needed, less brainpower towards meetings, we register everything at one client, and now we hardly have any meetings because AI keeps tabs on everything so the agile ceremonies are almost inexistent now. I love that and it frees a lot of time.
Whoever is concerned about being listened to, we already were, not to start any conspiracy theory or anything, but if the government/police etc were concerned with what you were doing they would tap your phone
They're competing with accelerationists who intend to release these products without any privacy or ethics at all. I'd say we're lucky Apple was first to market. What are the implications when everyone, everywhere is recording at all times, but the data may also be going TO anyone, anywhere? It would cause a huge cultural change to say the least.
I’m not a fan of where this tech is heading, especially when looking at all of the companies who are pushing for it. I do think it’s somewhat misleading to say that Apple is opening the door when we’re already seeing things like the glasses from meta, the upcoming (maybe now released) glasses from Google, and the plethora of AI powered devices and pendants already existing and I constantly get served ads for. I believe pocket and plaud are the two I see the most. We’re seemingly getting closer to living in a black mirror episode every day.
Apple is a consumer hardware manufacturer first and foremost, which is unlike the other examples you mentioned.
I’m a little confused by how your comment relates to what I was saying. I’m not saying it doesn’t but I truly just don’t understand what you’re getting at.
I interpreted as Apple doesn’t have the incentive to spy on you as other companies do, since Apple isn’t an ads company, compared with Google and Meta.
But yes I agree with you also that this isn’t solely on Apple opening the door.
Apple is not even in the same ZIP Code as Meta or Google. When you buy a product from Apple, they get all of the information upfront from you to complete a transaction no different than any retail store. There is no cost of acquisition.
There is no need to endlessly spy and the same pretty much applies to Amazon, Google and Meta may have a file on you, but in order to have that file, they need to spy. in short there is a big cost of acquisition for them to open up that dossier on you.
Apple or Amazon, in order for you to buy something from you, you have to exchange information in order to complete the transaction, which is no different than any other retailer that you would ever do business with, that isn’t Google, and that isn’t Meta. not at their core. And don’t bring up the Me-Too hardware products that both companies try to sell from time to time. Those are just small side work in the big picture for them.
Amazon spies a lot actually and they sell ads too.
They are not like Apple at all.
Yeah but the reason apple is doing it is because they have no more ideas for new features. These always on listening features are the best ideas they have.
> I interpreted as Apple doesn’t have the incentive to spy on you as other companies do
Just read the TOS.
An always-on listening watch seems like a walking lawsuit target by anyone around.
At the very least, workplaces will probably not find it amusing "you're recording all of your colleagues, all day, every day?!?!?".
Significant others... well, that'll be a conversation. :D
> The S11 chip uses a lightweight AI model to determine whether speech is occurring nearby. This model doesn’t transcribe or record anything. It simply detects whether a conversation has started. If a conversation is detected, audio flows into a protected buffer inside the Secure Exclave on the S11 chip.
It does record audio. A microphone is constantly receiving sound waves and writing them in a digital format in a particular audio file encoding as inputs to a model. That is a recording. I don’t see how this passes legal and doesn’t expose them to class action for false advertising.
What you're describing is listening, not recording. If the bits only exist transiently on the wire and are given only as streamed input to a time series binary classifier which emits a simple true/false signal and are not written to more permanent storage, then it's hard to see how anyone could call that a recording.
A human listens. A digital system cannot listen because it must always write the analog signals into a digital representation: a recording. When you call `model(last 10 min of audio)` that is a recording. I suppose a system could "listen" if it somehow took as input the actual electrical voltages from the microphone receiver.
This might sound pedantic but it is very nefarious to me that Apple is marketing a device as "never recording" when it is actually always recording. And this is a claim going back to Siri with wake words. Again, they claim it doesn’t record and I don’t see the logic there.
> I suppose a system could "listen" if it somehow took as input the actual electrical voltages from the microphone receiver
Ah, it feels like this may be the crux of the issue, because that's pretty much what uncompressed audio is. Every value in a WAV file roughly represents the displacement of the microphone diaphragm at time t.
> A human listens. A digital system cannot listen because it must always write
There are two issues with what you're saying, depending on what you mean by that:
1) Transmission isn't storage. When you talk to me you it would be unreasonable to say that your voice is being "recorded" in the air or in my eardrum or even necessarily in my brain, even though vibrations are in some real sense physically present across the air molecules and my eardrum is being physically displaced and my brain is doing...well...some unknown ephemeral aggregation in order to produce thoughts in my head from what you're saying. So if you transmit bits over a wire, and even if you have enough wires to represent bits from many time quanta, you should likewise not call those bits recorded by the same principle of innate ephemerality.
Bits on wire in audio stream at time t ~= position of your eardrum at time t. Neither are reasonably considered storage without persistence, which we have no knowledge of, and neither are reasonably considered on their own to be representations of what is being said.
2) You don't need to accumulate data to analyze it. You can, but you don't need to, and I don't think we know that they are.
You can think of a hash function. A hash function need not record its input stream. It need only record the accumulated influence of the input on the prediction. Storing a running statistical guess about whether you're talking and recording what you're saying are not the same thing.
Some would consider a Boolean signal to be a record of something.
Performative denseness is unattractive.
Friend, if this is your response to a simple comment you may need to take some time away from internet forums to reflect on why you act this way.
Let's be real, they've been doing this for years ever since they introduced siri. By now everyone's had an experience similar to having a conversation about something without searching or typing anything into a digital device and then magically starting to receive targeted advertising about said thing.
A whistleblower revealed Apple were using a contracted sweatshop in Ireland to grade Siri recordings - although not for ads. They actually settled a class action for this just this year.
https://techworkerhandbook.org/stories/thomas-le-bonniec/
I’d be interested to know what the policy is on Watch 12 at Apple. A transcribing and summarizing watch in confidential meetings seems contrary to their security policy.
There are different science fiction books that talk about high tech 'dust' or other micromachines that otherwise exist almost everywhere in the world monitoring everything. While the exact imagined implementations may not work, I can't help but believe that micro technology could spell the end of most privacy. Humans simply exist on the wrong scale. Our voice, our actions all leave a large amount of entropy in the world to be picked up and monitored by things far smaller than we are and fed into larger networks.
This will be helpful for arguments with family members, bosses, et al.
"Audio Intelligence features are private by design, combining hardware, software, and services to protect user privacy in a way that only Apple can. These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. By design, Audio Intelligence features do not identify and attribute speakers, to protect the privacy of both the user and those around them. Siri Recap produces a brief, high-level summary of conversations — not a transcript — and is designed to exclude sensitive information like financial information or government-assigned identifiers. Live Rewind text snippets and Siri Recap summaries are end-to-end encrypted in the Siri app with iCloud syncing, and are not accessible even by Apple. Read more about how Audio Intelligence protects privacy:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49632685
Also related: "Dystopian Surveillance Is Becoming a Reality" sep.2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715934 101 comments
Wonder how it could turn out in states like FL where consent is needed for recording conversations.
The untested loophole is you can't access the audio or direct transcript, just a "summary" of everything everyone around you says.
So, a written recording then? ;)
Meta makes pervert glasses, and not wanting to be left out Apple's take is to make a pervert watch?
No really going for the privacy minded consumer with this one are they.
Can't have another company monetizing the Torment Nexus first.
Aren’t we already in that world?
you mean like Alexa and Google Assistant devices have done for years?
At least Apple's features are opt-in, unlike most others which are opt-out
Opt-in for the owner of the wearable device, not for the people being listened to.
Kind of like Meta’s approach to those glasses that record everyone you look at, except without an indicator the owner has to cover up or disable.
which is a crime in certain states (wiretapping laws)
Apple lawyers will argue you can’t access the audio or transcript directly, just an AI interpretation of what was said.
Like someone next to you on a train recalling from memory what you said to your boss.
In most cases "other people" can be seen. A watch is easily overlooked or hidden.
People can usually judge if a situation is public or not easily. With a listening device everywhere that's not the case anymore.
In short: that comparison would be stupid.
wait, who opens the door?
Id prefer a privacy-care company over META, OAI, GOOG, etc.
misleading title!
Whatever happens, make sure you defend Apple.
Nothing relate to defend Amazon and Apple don’t need to dig in the trash like Meta and Google to generate a file on someone like Meta and Google. There is no cost of acquisition.
I see people focusing a lot on the negatives here. But let's consider what this means for the future of jobs. It will be easyer to understand what is needed, less brainpower towards meetings, we register everything at one client, and now we hardly have any meetings because AI keeps tabs on everything so the agile ceremonies are almost inexistent now. I love that and it frees a lot of time.
Whoever is concerned about being listened to, we already were, not to start any conspiracy theory or anything, but if the government/police etc were concerned with what you were doing they would tap your phone
of course the bulwark of this intrusion is apple
[flagged]
They're competing with accelerationists who intend to release these products without any privacy or ethics at all. I'd say we're lucky Apple was first to market. What are the implications when everyone, everywhere is recording at all times, but the data may also be going TO anyone, anywhere? It would cause a huge cultural change to say the least.