Apple Watch Gets AI-Powered Audio Intelligence Features
Apple is making its smartwatches more useful by adding AI-powered features. These features help users remember conversations and everyday details. The tools are built to make it easier to go and listen to things people have said. They also help people recall instructions and keep track of information. This way users don’t have to write everything down. The goal is to make life simpler and keep people organised.
Whether it’s a conversation at work, instructions given during a meeting or a chat, with a friend these features can help users remember what was said whenever they need to recall it.
The company first introduced these capabilities along with its smartwatch lineup in September. Now two of the features have entered developer beta testing bringing Apple closer, to expanding the role of AI in its wearable devices.
Apple Watch gets Live Rewind and Siri Recap: How they work
Apple’s Audio Intelligence features are now rolling out to developers through the watchOS 27.3 beta. The update brings four features to the Apple Watch Series 12 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4. These new features include Live Rewind, Siri Recap, Sound Recognition and Music Recognition that works with Shazam.
Live Rewind helps users who miss a part of a conversation or want to remember something they just heard. To use it users double-press the Digital Crown. This pulls up the 15 seconds of what was said. The smartwatch shows the words, as a short text snippet. Users can save this snippet to the Siri app. Use it to ask Siri more questions. If they decide not to save it the snippet fades away on its own.
Siri Recap offers another way to keep track of conversations. It generates brief summaries and bullet points, highlighting important information such as dates, deadlines and key discussion points. Users can review these summaries and save them to Apple Notes or Journal. Any unwanted summaries are automatically removed after seven days.
The remaining two features focus on identifying sounds. Sound Recognition can detect important noises, including sirens, alarms, doorbells and a baby crying. Meanwhile, Music Recognition uses Shazam technology to identify songs playing nearby and display their titles and artists.
Compatibility, privacy and availability
Apple has highlighted privacy as an important part of its new Audio Intelligence experience. The features are opt-in and do not create or store audio recordings. Siri Recap does not identify individual speakers or produce word-for-word transcripts. Live Rewind also provides an audible chime and microphone indicator whenever it is activated.
The features rely on Apple’s S11 chip and Secure Exclave technology, along with Apple Intelligence and Private Cloud Compute.
However, access will initially be limited to Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 paired with an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone 16 or later, excluding iPhone 16e.
At launch, Live Rewind and Siri Recap will support English. Apple is expected to introduce a public beta before making the features more widely available. Users in the European Union will not initially get access to these capabilities.