Earlier this month, Apple announced that its new Apple Watches will have the ability to continuously listen to every spoken word they detect and create summaries of whatever's going on around you. The privacy blowback was immediate and inevitable: Experts warned of the legal risks of using the features, especially in nonpublic spaces and states where eavesdropping laws require both parties to consent to being recorded. Many others called the tech “creepy.â€
Apple, prepared for the backlash, launched an entire page of technical details in an attempt to reassure people that no, it's not spying on them. The company claimed that one feature, Live Rewind, uses a rolling buffer that only transcribes the last 15 seconds of speech, and another, Siri Recap, only provides “high-level summaries†of what it captured throughout the day — both without identifying individual speakers. There's even an audible chime that warns people nearby when the device is transcribing to prevent surreptitious eavesdropping! At least, in theory.
To many, these supposed privacy safeguards are cold comfort at a time when widely hated surveillance tech like Flock cameras cover rural and suburban communities, subway walls advertise always-listening AI “Friend†pendants, and predatory influencers use Meta RayBan glasses to harass women in public. It's 2026, and the number-one consumer technology trend seems to be devices that constantly listen to and record everything and everyone around us at all times — with or without consent — subjecting people to a new kind of surveillance where they're responsible for spotting subtle lights and beeps to know that they're being spied on. And it's not surprising that many people have simply had enough.
After Meta was widely mocked (not to mention sued) this summer after launching an aggressive, Kardashian-powered ad campaign that attempted to imbue its newly derided “pervert glasses†with surveillance state chic, the company now wants to look like it's making some concessions. It launched a less pervy version of the glasses that don't have a camera at all at Meta Connect 2026 — along with a slate of more camera-equipped glasses. (Meta plans to offer 100 versions of its glasses by the end of the year.)
Usually known as the more privacy-conscious of its Silicon Valley kin, Apple is now signaling its entry into this growing trend of ambient consumer surveillance devices.
The true purpose of these features is to attempt to shift the burden of privacy from the company to the consumer — and then from the consumer to the average person who happens to be nearby.
“I think Apple entering the space as the company that has based their reputation on ‘privacy' is especially relevant because they are trying to essentially change the definition of what ‘record' means,†Chris Gilliard, an independent privacy researcher and author of Luxury Surveillance, a forthcoming book describing the trend, told The Verge. “And because of the popularity of their devices, the potential for normalizing always being surreptitiously listened to is enormous.â€
The companies making these products advertise features that could alert those nearby that they may be recorded — a tiny, blinking red light on Meta smart glasses or a chime sound on the Apple Watch — as privacy safeguards. Together with releasing “best practices†guides that make suggestions for proper device etiquette, these features help create the appearance that the company is taking privacy concerns seriously. But critics like Gilliard argue that the true purpose of these features is to attempt to shift the burden of privacy from the company to the consumer — and then from the consumer to the average person who happens to be nearby.
The problem, which tech companies have surely realized, is that this “warn and record†design approach is fundamentally incompatible with the established social norms of shared spaces.
“This really isn't how consent works. All of these are after the fact and require some action from the people who are already being recorded / listened to, rather than them being able to say ‘no' before a recording begins,†said Gilliard. “It doesn't really solve the problem, but allows the company to claim that it's an issue they are trying to address.â€
In other words, no matter what privacy “safeguards†these devices might have, they don't change the simple fact of what they are designed to do: capture everything around them, with or without the knowledge or consent of humans who happen to be nearby.
The new Apple Watch live recording features complicate matters further, since the devices aren't storing audio, but attempting to transcribe audible speech and sounds in real time. It adds to a growing pile of legal and ethical loose ends created by the presence of always-listening tech products: If two people have a conversation in a cafe and a nearby AI-enabled device roughly summarizes what was said for a third party without retaining any audio data, can you honestly argue that's not a “recording� How accurate would the automated transcription need to be in order for it to be considered a recording, and at what point would that recording become accurate enough to, for example, be admissible in court?
It would be a fascinating philosophical debate, if not for the fact that companies like Apple, Meta, and Flock have already had the debate without us and created the tech anyway — consequences and all.
By now, Silicon Valley has strategically moved their goal posts for what constitutes “consent,†and it is vanishingly far from its commonly understood definition. From ad-tech tracking our internet browsing, to Ring doorbell cameras overlooking neighborhoods, to Alexa listening for your commands in your own home, for years the tech industry has used the “boiling frog†strategy to slowly erode our expectations of privacy in public and private spaces, selling these features as part of a Faustian bargain in the name of convenience.
While Apple is far from the worst offender, privacy advocates say its entry into the ambient surveillance trend is indicative of how tech companies have used these devices to try and push the boundaries of what is considered normal and acceptable behavior in shared spaces.
Silicon Valley has strategically moved their goal posts for what constitutes “consent,†and it is vanishingly far from its commonly understood definition.
At the core of this tension is how ambient surveillance tech threatens to shift interactions that we'd otherwise regard as fleeting and low-stakes into something recorded and permanent. While some cheer the Apple Watch instant replays as a solution to spacing out during work meetings or a way of “never losing an argument again,†others very naturally whinge at the thought of their ephemeral in-person conversations potentially being made into permanent (albeit imperfect) records by invisible robotic overseers. After all, how can anyone speak freely if every passing utterance or fanciful thought can become a potential liability?
“Opt-out models are not consent,†Jenna Sherman, a campaign director for the advocacy group UltraViolet, which focuses on the impacts of consumer tech on gendered and sexual violence, told The Verge. “Being given the option to opt out rather than choosing actively to opt in are very different. One requires a person to be informed and to be enthusiastically and intentionally choosing something, and the other is passive and doesn't actually place any power into the consumer's hand. This decision is being made by the companies, and the consumer is being forced to adapt to that decision, and the default model is that you will be subjected to that surveillance.â€
Sherman notes that companies are likely well aware of the fact that many people will find it difficult or impossible to truly opt out when always-listening and always-watching devices become ubiquitous. “Not everyone sees the recording light, not everyone hears whatever warning sound is playing on a watch, especially if you're at a party or a concert, or if you're a parent at a children's playroom,†said Sherman. “It's just putting more and more of the onus on consumers to look out for a thousand more things, when the onus needs to be ethically and legally on the companies themselves to not be subjecting us to constant surveillance.â€
On some level, tech companies seem to realize they're fighting a losing cultural battle, and that the current trend of ambient surveillance devices may be a bridge too far. Many people simply hate having to deal with this, especially at a time when the tech industry has already done so much to viscerally disrupt their everyday lives. Everyday people who otherwise wouldn't be concerned about privacy have been vandalizing and destroying Flock cameras in rural and suburban communities across the country. And populist opposition to polluting, power-hungry AI data centers has catalyzed intense nationwide protests that are reshaping American politics and taking elected officials along with them.
Even Apple's scaled-back listening features on the Apple Watch seem to be a way for the company to strategically distance itself from the more extreme and reckless “luxury surveillance†products that Gilliard describes. But Sherman argues that regardless of their supposed safeguards, these products are still designed to stretch and violate our normative boundaries of consent in shared spaces — something which always disproportionately impacts women and other marginalized people at greater risk of sexualized and discriminatory violence.
“These tools might be useful in certain cases, but as a whole they are not built for us. If anything they were built to harm us, and we know that because the entire model is nonconsensual,†said Sherman. “They're creating an environment in which we have to be constantly vigilant about whether or not we might be watched or recorded. That isn't just horrifying, it's also physically and mentally debilitating.â€
“It's not just their own privacy that they're compromising, it's every single person in their life.â€
Even still, privacy advocates say that the recent backlash against tech industry oversteps like Flock cameras and AI data centers shows that regular people aren't ready to throw in the towel. An app called “AntiZuck Smart Glasses Scanner†that detects nearby smart glasses via Bluetooth signals recently became one of the top paid apps on Apple's AppStore. Restaurants, bars, and nightclubs have started permanently banning smart glasses — and anyone wearing them — citing the need to protect the privacy of patrons. And all the while, people have been seeing firsthand the consequences of mass surveillance as cops across the country are caught using Flock cameras to stalk their exes, love interests, and random people caught in the dragnet.
“I think that tech companies have ultimately underestimated our consumer power and our sense of our own agency,†said Sherman. “This is a collective burden we have to share, and I think that every consumer has a responsibility to reject these tools and to say explicitly why they reject them. Because it's not just their own privacy that they're compromising, it's every single person in their life.â€
“My guess is that these companies still know these ideas are massively unpopular, and these interventions are a way of pretending that they are proceeding carefully,†said Gilliard, of the devices' privacy features. “They know what people want, but their needs are different.â€
