The Apple Watch’s New ‘Siri Recap’ Feature Is Even Creepier Than I Expected

The “Siri Recap” function that Apple revealed in September is lastly offered in a designer beta, and I’ve invested the last 24 hours with the function switched on. It’s much more upsetting than the “Live Rewind” function that went for the very same time. It listens to all my discussions, and produces summaries that are both practical and deeply scary.

I have a button in the watch’s Control Center that can turn the wrapping up capabilities off, however if I forget to do so, Siri listens to whateverI’ll get a wrap-up of my whole night, provided in approximately hour-long portions, consisting of things I would have totally forgotten I had actually even become aware of.

The wrap-ups somberly point out ridiculous memes my kids were chuckling about, and make significant bullet mention of offhand remarks from quick discussions. If a discussion adheres to a single subject, I’ll typically get a fairly excellent summary of it, with particular realities and numbers highlighted; however simply as typically, Siri will get puzzled and blend a number of subjects or totally mishear a name or expression.
What are Siri Recaps, and where do they fit amongst the other Audio Intelligence functions? Apple has 4 functions that it thinks about part of “audio intelligence”:

• Music recognition, better known as Shazam. We’ve had a version of this on the Apple Watch for a long time now, although it has some improvements and now identifies music automatically.
• Sound recognition, which can notify you about doorbells and babies crying. A version of this launched in 2020 as an accessibility feature. 

• Live Rewind, which gives you an on-wrist transcript of the last 15 seconds of detected speech.

• Siri Recaps, which summarizes entire conversations for you to read on your phone.

Live Rewind had the flashiest demo from the Apple event: A server rattled off the day’s specials at a restaurant, and then the Apple Watch-wearing diner checked his watch to see a readout of exactly which dishes had just been mentioned. The utility is both obvious and kind of unnecessary: Why wouldn’t you just ask the server to repeat the list while they’re standing right there? 

I haven’t found myself using Live Rewind, except out of curiosity about how the feature works. I discovered that it doesn’t pick up song lyrics very well, and also that by the time I think to check what was just said in a conversation, more than 15 seconds has passed since the part I was unsure about. I haven’t yet found a reason to use it for real.

But Siri Recaps? Those are both useful and unsettling. I enabled the feature, and decided to test it out later. But since it was on, it dutifully listened in as I picked up my son from school and gave him an update on an ailing family member’s health. We stopped by the library, and along the way we chatted about a variety of things: holiday travel plans, library policies, and the possibility of humans living in space in the future. Siri was listening to it all. 

How to turn on Siri recaps

At least for now, the feature is only available in a developer beta, so sign up for that now if you want to try it. You’ll need an Apple Watch Series 12 (or Ultra 4) and an iPhone 16 or better, excluding the 16e. (I have a 16 Pro, so I’m good.)

After you’re updated to 27.3, go into the Watch app, tap Siri, and turn on Siri Recap. You can set a schedule for when it should listen (for example, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., if you want it on for the work day but off for the evening). You’ll need to set a passcode on your watch, and you’ll be guided through a step to upgrade your audio connection. The control center on the watch will have a button you can use to turn Siri recaps on and off at will. To read your recaps, go to the Siri app on your phone.

What I found in my Siri recaps

As promised, the recaps do not identify speakers. They do not contain an exact transcript, and there is no way to listen to a recording to check what exactly was said. This is probably good for privacy and for relationships; there’s no way to prove that your spouse said such-and-such exact thing. I can also tell people I am not recording them, and technically be correct. 

But still: I feel weird publishing the contents of these recaps, because they do contain things that people said to me in what they assumed was a private setting. I had the feature on when I attended a choir practice, and Siri recapped the brief chats I had with other choir members before and after practice. (Interestingly, it did not recap any of the quiet conversations I had with fellow sopranos while the tenors were rehearsing their part. I’m not sure if the watch was unable to hear us over the music, or if Siri is programmed not to listen when music is being played.)

Since speakers aren’t recognized, it appears Siri does not understand what to do when there is a difference. A human note-taker would write that Person A made a point in favor of something, and individual B made a point versus. When my kid and I disagreed about how most likely area colonization may be in the future, the wrap-up didn’t show the different positions that were put forth. It summed up the discussion as consisting of “disputing the expediency and timeline of human area colonization and asteroid mining,” which isn’t precisely precise, however close enough.

When it pertains to the material of the conversation, the wrap-up keeps in mind a bullet point of “uncertainty relating to long-term area nests within the next 100 years.” It didn’t include my factors for being doubtful, and didn’t discuss my boy’s opposing perspective at all. If I were utilizing this wrap-up to jog my memory of the discussion, it would not be all that useful.

Information are in some cases egregiously inaccurate. After a conversation about a member of the family’s health, the wrap-up had notes on the diagnosis of “dad.” The relative we talked about is not anyone’s daddy. Names in basic appear to be an issue; I suggested a book to my kid, and the wrap-up consists of notes about the material of the book, however not its title. The book’s author appears in the intro to the wrap-up (sort of a summary of a summary), however not in the material of the wrap-up itself where the book is pointed out.

Siri wrap-ups may work, however at what expense?

I need to most likely turn Siri summarizes off. It appears incorrect to let individuals chat with me without letting them understand that their discussion is being … well, not technically taped, however essentially taped.

It’s so appealing to leave it on so that I can evaluate my day. A few of the information in the wrap-ups work, like the dates that were talked about as alternatives for a vacation celebration. The wrap-ups will be erased in about a week (unless I conserve them to the notes app), so if I wish to advise myself of a discussion a couple of days earlier, I ought to have the ability to scroll back through my wrap-ups and discover it.

I would be a fool to rely On the wrap-ups. The most crucial points of a discussion are frequently overlooked; Siri does not understand what’s in fact essential, and there’s no other way to assist it regarding what to focus on. Particular information can be incorrect, as I discussed. There’s likewise no other way to manage when a “discussion” begins or stops, unless you are turning the wrap-up function on and off from the watch.

And there’s more: Not just are names typically left out (wait, who did she state I should inquire about that job?), the couple of identifiers that make it into the wrap-up, like names of occasions, are typically incorrect. Topics of conversation are frequently conflated in actually unhelpful methods: My other half pointed out spending for specific course registrations for among our kids, and later on I spoke to that kid about an unassociated examination. The wrap-up got all of these things blended with each other and was incorrect about practically every information. About all the wrap-up might usefully do is to advise me that something about AP U.S. History was gone over. Checking out the wrap-ups can be like reliving your day totally in the passive voice.