Apple’s new Siri Recap feature for the Apple Watch is drawing fire from users who liken it to mass surveillance.
The backlash erupted after the tech giant unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 during its September 9 product launch at the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino. John Ternus, 55, who succeeded Tim Cook as chief executive on September 1, introduced the updated wearables alongside the company’s latest iPhone lineup, which includes a foldable model called the iPhone Duo.
Pre-orders for both watch models opened immediately in markets including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, France, India, and the UAE, with in-store availability set for September 18.
The feature generating the most heat is Siri Recap, which Apple describes as an ambient note-taking tool. According to the company’s website, the function “ambiently takes notes on your conversations throughout your day and creates high-level Apple Intelligence–generated summaries that you can use later to jog your memory, so you can stay present in the moment.” The summaries automatically delete after seven days unless the user chooses to save them.
Social media users did not hold back. “Big Brother is listening to your every word… Courtesy of Apple,” one person said of the new feature.
“Oh so we really are normalising surveillance,” wrote another on Twitter.
A third chimed in: “This is literally a Black Mirror episode.”
Somebody else questioned: “Do they not realize how incredibly creepy this is?”
Apple has pushed back against the surveillance framing with detailed privacy assurances. The company states that Siri Recap summaries and saved Live Rewind text snippets stored in the Siri app “are end-to-end encrypted when synced through iCloud, so only you can access them, and only on your trusted devices.” The tech giant also notes that people can view, edit, or delete summaries at any time, and that deletion removes them from all synced devices.
The feature is not permanently active by default. Per Apple’s website, “Siri Recap runs only when you choose.” Users can enable it through the Watch app on iPhone, set schedules based on time or location such as “only at work” or “never at night,” manually toggle it on and off, or access controls through Control Center at any time. Users can also export summaries and text snippets to other apps including Notes and Journal.
The September 9 event marked Ternus’s first major product launch since taking the helm from Cook, who had led Apple since 2011. The executive transition and subsequent hardware reveal placed additional scrutiny on how the new leadership team would position emerging AI capabilities against growing consumer privacy concerns.
The controversy arrives as Apple continues integrating Apple Intelligence across its device ecosystem, with the watch serving as the latest frontier for ambient computing. The company’s challenge now is convincing skeptical customers that convenience does not come at the cost of covert monitoring, even as competitors race to deploy similar always-listening AI assistants.