Apple Doesn't Want You to Worry About the New Apple Watch's Listening Features

The new Apple Watch includes several "intelligent" listening features that have privacy and security baked in. But the protections can't change the facts of what the tools do. The new Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 come not just with better fitness tracking and upgraded noise reduction, but a whole new way to listen. Apple announced on Wednesday that the two smartwatches come with four opt-in "audio intelligence" tools that are powered by audio gathered by the watches' microphones. They include sound and music recognition, a conversation recap feature, and "Live Rewind" so a user can see a transcription of anything that was said in their environment in the previous 15 seconds.