With Apple Intelligence, you don't need to worry about emails or texts or calendar alerts. You can clear your skin and track your health stats and even generate entirely new realities.
And with Siri AI's Recap and Live Rewind, debuted at the Apple September iPhone event, it'll keep track of your memories, too.
What do Live Rewind and Siri Recap do?
Announced Wednesday, Apple's new AI-powered audio features catch ambient audio of your live conversations in the background, analyzes them, and throws summaries, highlights, and direct quotes right back at you.
Forget the directions the stranger gave you? Siri's got you. Missed the thing your boss said? Siri is a great assistant. Didn't pay attention to the emotional story your best friend just recounted? Um — Hey Siri?
Apple's data collection feature calls to mind hardware devices like Pocket and Plaud, and AI recording and note-taking apps like Granola, which have become popular in Silicon Valley. The tool stirred immediate privacy concerns among Apple fans, with some likening it to a covert recording device — and once again calling to mind future data-mining technologies featured in Netflix sci-fi drama Black Mirror.
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When activated, Live Rewind uses that ambient recording ability to recount the last 15 seconds of audio captured in your vicinity, which can be saved to your device or described back to you instantly. Recap actively takes notes on conversations throughout your day, then offers up AI-generated summaries of what happened.
It's part of a fleet of Audio Intelligence features debuting with the new microphone aboard the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4, including enhanced sound and music recognition.
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Do these features collect your personal data?
Like its other Apple Intelligence features, Apple said during its presentation that recorded conversations for Siri AI's Recap and Live Rewind are end-to-end encrypted. Devices do not collect or store actual audio recordings, the company added, and Siri will not identify specific speakers or attribute quotes to named individuals.
Raw audio data — which Apple is adamant to describe not as exact transcripts, but as notes — is not accessible by app developers, users, or Apple itself.
Apple also added built-in content guardrails, which were not elaborated on during Wednesday's keynote. According to a blog post by Apple, Recaps are designed to "omit potentially harmful content." This means mentions of self-harm and hate speech won't be included in daily summaries. Similarly, Apple says Siri will filter out mentions of personally identifiable information like financial information or "authentication data" (passwords).
"While audio is not recorded and stored, and no speakers are attributed, consider those around you where conversations might be private or sensitive," Apple wrote.
Live Rewind with Siri Recap will be available in beta this fall, starting in English.
UPDATE: Sep. 9, 2026, 1:43 p.m. This story was updated with additional information on privacy protections for Live Rewind and Siri Recap.
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