At Wednesday’s iPhone Duo launch event, Apple unveiled a series of new Siri AI Audio Intelligence features, including Siri Recap, Live Rewind, Sound Recognition, and Music Recognition. Alongside these features, Apple released a document detailing how they plan to ensure that user audio remains private. According to Apple, raw audio from these features is processed within a Secure Exclave on the S11 chip, which means it’s never saved, transcribed, or accessible to the operating system, apps, users, or Apple itself.

The document explains that the audio from the microphone enters the Secure Exclave of the Apple Watch, where it is processed for speech, sounds, or music, but not transcribed or stored. This data exists only within the protected hardware and is continually overwritten, ensuring no audio recordings are created. Users also have control over whether and when these features are active. For example, Live Rewind requires users to double-tap the Digital Crown every time they want to activate it. If Audio Intelligence needs to be transferred to your iPhone, it’s done with encryption through both devices' Secure Exclaves.

Moreover, users can choose what text to keep from Siri Recap and Live Rewind, and text from Audio Intelligence will sync with end-to-end encryption if you have a device passcode and use iCloud’s two-factor authentication. This comprehensive approach to privacy suggests that Apple is prioritizing user data security, but the real question remains: are we becoming too accustomed to these privacy measures?