With Siri Recap, Apple threw a punch at OpenAI no one saw coming
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If it manages to force regulation to define appropriate use of ambient AI, Apple wins.
With Siri Recap, Apple threw a punch at OpenAI no one saw coming
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If it manages to force regulation to define appropriate use of ambient AI, Apple wins.
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Credit: Apple
John Ternus’ Apple threw a curveball at OpenAI with Siri Recap on Apple Watch, accelerating a conversation about privacy and data protection in an AI-augmented digital era. It’s a move that may yet contribute to finding a balance between scary surveillance and digital convenience.
Think of it this way: Apple operates on such a big scale that it must have expected the feature to face regulatory and legal investigation. We know Apple has tried to stay on the right side of existing data protection and privacy laws by ensuring that its system doesn’t keep personal data, audio recordings, or transcripts, but one thing it doesn’t do is achieve consent from everyone who may be exposed to the feature. That’s a big no-no in some places, and it’s logical to think Apple expects some pushback to that.
Apple thought it through
From where I sit, it looks like Apple has thought about this. You only need to look to Apple Worldwide Marketing VP Greg Joswiak’s recent comments on the matter to see this, as he very swiftly tried to position Recap as little more than the digital equivalent of notebook and pen, or a smartphone set to record. The difference is that using the latter still technically requires consent in some places, while using a pen and paper does not.
But if Apple has thought about it and anticipates oversight, then there are benefits to be had. Apple is not the only company seeking to use ambient data monitoring and AI tech to create new product families. Meta, OpenAI, and others also seem to be exploring ambient monitoring with AI, possibly with less of a commitment to privacy.
While it’s true as a general rule that your rights in a public place are weaker, they are not nonexistent, and both Apple and OpenAI must expect to face regulatory pushback on what they make.
This could be why Apple has accelerated regulatory conversation concerning such tools by introducing Siri Recap. The argument is that by forcing legislatures to make decisions on such matters, Apple is effectively throwing a punch at competitors who must also work within the law. (Though with data encryption such a huge piece of the privacy jigsaw, it’s fair to say that some nations may yet mess things up.)
Because it isn’t just about Apple
It makes sense for international lawmakers to create a harmonized framework of legislation to govern such products, particularly as they clamber headlong into so many different layers of protected personal existence. Apple’s decision to create this product at this time means regulators will now have to decide where to draw the line.
We can surmise where Apple thinks that line will be on the basis of what Joswiak said and the actions the company has taken with a variety of guardrails to maintain privacy and data security. The idea it seems to be moving toward is that by stripping out the stuff we want kept private, it has effectively built the digital equivalent of writing a few notes in your book with a pen while a conversation takes place.
If Apple’s argument prevails, then those will become the regulatory-approved principles to define what other companies must do with their devices in this space. Including Meta and OpenAI.
Caught in a trap
That’s going to be fine for some entities, but companies that want to build businesses on your data will be disadvantaged by those decisions. Apple’s approach is that by defining the space, it also knows precisely what it must do to compete within it. That’s going to make for a far more equal playing field as AI hardware reaches the market.
A second outcome Apple may also be looking at is that by challenging regulators to sit down and declare what data and privacy rights consumers should enjoy in an AI digital age, it also identifies terms of reference to inform how its future AR glasses handle and process external video. Right now, it’s plausible to imagine a similar arrangement in which actual video is never stored, just classified and summarized like audio in Siri Recap.
And, of course, one final potential outcome might be that if Apple manages to convince the EU that its system provides an appropriate balance between consumer privacy and security and third-party product design, then it may forge a path through the impasse that currently stops Apple Intelligence from working in the EU. This could be a blueprint of the intermediary architecture Apple originally proposed to the EU when it first introduced Apple Intelligence. We’ll have to see if Europe accepts that.
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