The latest Apple Watches come equipped with four new 'audio intelligence' features, designed to make your life easier. But as WIRED reports, these features might make you feel like Big Brother is listening. Apple insists that these tools, such as sound and music recognition and a conversation recap feature, are built to protect your privacy. However, the extensive infrastructure required for these features hints at a world where AI is increasingly ubiquitous in our daily lives.

The company claims that raw audio data is not stored or accessible to third parties. Instead, processed data is sent to the cloud for identification purposes, with safeguards in place to ensure that sensitive information is not retained. For instance, when using the Shazam feature, only a signature of the song is sent to the server, with no audio files. Similarly, the Siri Recap feature generates a minimal transcript of conversations, with non-essential elements removed and sensitive data removed from the final summary.

The new Live Rewind feature allows users to request a text version of the last 15 seconds of sound in their environment, but it too has measures to protect privacy. This data is transmitted securely between the Apple Watch and iPhone, and the audio is deleted once the text is generated. Apple asserts that these features are designed to be as secure as possible, but the sheer number of features highlights the increasing role of AI in our daily lives.

While Apple's efforts to protect user privacy are commendable, the reality is that these features could be used to monitor your every move. Whether you're having a private conversation or enjoying a song, the Apple Watch is listening – just not storing anything too incriminating.