Apple is typically pretty advanced and thoughtful about how they design and launch products.
Which is why I’m surprised they never shipped a pretty simple 2-party consent feature inside of their new Apple Watch transcription system.
[Brief description of the Apple Watch transcription system, including PARA links to posts and writings about it]
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See, when Apple designed and shipped the AirTag system, they took great pains to emphasize the ways in which it used the global network of iPhones to identify AirTag locations without leaking the identifiers of the iPhones that might pickup those signals.
They understood the value of the AirTag product but also knew how to design + market the product to address privacy concerns.
[Detailed, narriative description of the development, announcement, launch, and iteration of the Apple AirTag system, complete with references to ways it’s been used for bad]
Here, Apple had the perfect opportunity to ship a fabulous multi-party consent feature natively with the Apple Watch Transcription feature to ensure anyone in earshot of an Apple Watch who did NOT want to be recorded could shut that feature down.
Imagine a system, where, each of us could mark on our own personal iPhone or Apple Watch whether we do, or do NOT, want to have our words summarized for Siri transcripts.
Just like the mesh of Apple Devices help identify an AirTag silently, without leaking which device(s) found the AirTag, here too you could have a system wherein if an Apple Device owned by someone who did NOT wish to have their voice recorded is anywhere within, say 15-30ft. [calculate & use standard Bluetooth ranges here to calculate the distance], then the Apple Watch would only ever display to it’s owner a message saying “Apple Watch did not have universal consent to transcribe this conversation,” if the user sought to view an Apple Watch transcription.
Now, for people who tried and got that error, I’m sure many people would risk being “outed,” by that notification.
If you’re alone in a clearing talking to exactly one other person and your Apple Watch tells you it didn’t have authorization to record, well, that tells you what setting that other person has on their devices.
And well, as far as the question of why wouldn’t they ship this?
I’ve answered my own question: most of us would turn it off by default.
But on a technical level, this would be child’s play for Apple to ship.
Which is why it’s inexcusable and foolhardy they didn’t.
