Apple Watch's Siri Recaps Always Listen, Risking a Meta Glasses-Style Backlash
Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening
Apple's new Siri Recaps feature turns the Apple Watch into an always-on listener, capturing your daily conversations and activities. While the convenience is undeniable, the constant audio monitoring raises serious privacy concerns, echoing the backlash Meta faced with its smart glasses. Will Apple's approach trigger a similar public outcry?
Thanks to Siri Recaps, your Apple Watch is always listening as you go about your day — but Apple may be risking a Meta Glasses-style backlash.
- encyclopedism
Alarming normalisation. Issues I see off the top of my head:
- Governments can now learn even more about you when they confiscate your device.
- Devices confiscated at airports provide a full history of you.
- Privacy issues: will my conversation with someone using this tech truly be private? Do I have to be careful what I say around everyone by default? Always have clear thought out opinions?
- Personal relations: spouses, friends, relatives demanding to see your history to check up on you and what you've been 'thinking'?
- Society where nothing can be assumed to be private by default
- Slippery slope to a future where you have always on location, cameras, mics for everyone with a mobile device. A complete reshaping of society. Therefore being unable to count on previous societal norms
Anyone got any other issues they can think of?
- jsw97
This is, I believe, a felony in Massachusetts.
https://www.romanolaw.com/can-i-record-a-conversation-in-mas...
(Linking to discussion, not the statute, because it confirms that it is in fact enforced.)
Come to think of it, this would also include smart glasses, etc. And whatever those LG devices were doing. Paging the AG...
- haute_cuisine
With "use it or loose it" brain feature, I don't really want my natural recap skill to atrophy to make me dependent on this sort of tech. Not considering that they can secretly ship other monitoring features to constantly scan for certain discussions.
- Molitor5901
There has always been the myth/rumor/belief that our devices are always listening. I wonder if this is an overton window moment, get people used to a device actually listening and slowly move to all devices listening.
- bondarchuk
Crazy that this is about to be normalized. Can't help but think the discourse of "they already record everything anyway" of the past couple years (even in the absence of complete proof) has played a part.
- sdcfgy
That’s going to be a hell of a security risk for us. I think it’ll be a no watches policy in the office going forward.
- gumby
I like the idea (we’ll see about the execs). It seems to record what I would remember anyway (“yesterday you and Joe and Anupam talked about going fishing a chose a date”) unless I was distracted.
It’s like the cameras in the glasses. If all they said is what _I_ know (“That’s Julie who worked in the same group as you at company Z three years ago. You also ran into her at the grocery store shortly after you quit Z and it was awkward” but not tell me anything about Julie I wouldn’t know, like spouse or where she now works or anything like that”) it would be an excellent prosthesis. Public figures have humans who do this for them.
Unfortunately the glasses makers don’t understand the difference and make it too general and privacy destroying. This Apple thing might be OK in my opinion..but the reality remains to be seen.
- algoth1
Nice, no need for an LG TV anymore