The opening five minutes of John Ternus’s inaugural Apple CEO keynote didn’t feature a product launch or a history lesson. Instead, they recast the iPhone as an “intelligent personal hub.”
Among Apple’s product lineup, the iPhone requires no introduction. Yet, portraying it as a hub not only paved the way for the foldable, cross‑category iPhone Duo—a kind of iPhone/iPad hybrid—but also hinted at an AI‑driven wearable future Apple is already testing.
From everything Apple unveiled at this week’s “Surprise and shine” event, what struck me most wasn’t the Duo. It was the introduction of Audio Intelligence, a new AI‑powered assistive toolkit that will be available on the latest Apple Watches and several recent iPhone models.
Audio Intelligence: a memory‑keeping aid or a listening gadget? It listens, and through that listening it can create memories, retrieve moments, or essentially behave like the AI‑enabled wearables I’ve been experimenting with over the past few years. Live Rewind lets you revisit what was said up to 15 seconds earlier, and Siri Recap quietly summarizes and transcribes conversations when enabled.
Apple says Audio Intelligence is encrypted and that no actual audio recordings are stored. Still, its capabilities bring to mind Plaud’s AI wearables, the “Conversate” transcription feature on Even Realities G2 smart glasses, or Looki’s AI‑generated conversation summaries.
It appears built to operate in the background, capturing conversations as they happen—transcribing and summarizing them so you can read the text later or instantly, and have them searchable via Siri. If you miss a point in a chat, “Live Rewind” replays the last 15 seconds of a real‑world conversation, akin to asking your Apple TV what someone just said on a Netflix series.
It serves as a stepping stone for visual‑intelligence wearables slated for next year. Audio Intelligence also detects real‑world sounds such as sirens or doorbells—functionality that already exists in Apple’s assistive features for the Apple Watch and AirPods.
What will using Audio Intelligence on an Apple Watch feel like? I’m not sure—perhaps it’ll be like wearing an AI pendant on my wrist. Still, I can’t help but wonder what Apple has in store for us next.
Recaps and summaries become memories. Audio is simpler to capture than photos or video. Yet Visual Intelligence—a camera‑based method for Siri to analyze, translate, or recall what you see—already exists on iPhones, iPads, and the Vision Pro, and Apple’s upcoming next‑gen AirPods are rumored to include cameras for real‑world Visual Intelligence, possibly mirroring how Audio Intelligence functions on the Apple Watch.
Then there are smart glasses. Apple is expected to launch its own glasses next year, and the existing smart‑glass market is heavily AI‑driven—and increasingly viewed as privacy‑invading devices. Meta is currently absorbing much of the backlash, but will Apple manage to make people feel comfortable with assistive, constantly aware (and possibly recording) AI gadgets? Audio Intelligence feels like a tentative first step into a realm that grows more intimate and odd each year.
Can Apple convince us it’s safe? The company must push its AI forward to uncover genuine assistive applications for glasses, while also addressing privacy worries surrounding always‑recording wearables. I voiced this concern back in June, when the launch of the new Siri made clear that a framework for AI wearables and smart glasses was on its way.
Apple has to begin somewhere, and that starting point appears to be Audio Intelligence on the new Apple Watches. If it proves useful rather than unsettling, it could mark the opening chapter of the next phase of the “intelligent hub” that Ternus’s iPhone ecosystem is set to enter by 2027 and beyond.