Apple's Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 add AI audio recap features

Apple on Wednesday unveiled the Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 at its Surprise and Shine event in Cupertino. The smartwatches aren’t getting a major hardware overhaul, but they are getting significant software updates, most notably new “Audio Intelligence” features aimed at the growing wave of AI wearables that let users rewind moments and remember details from daily conversations.

The watches launch with “Live Rewind,” which lets users go back up to 15 seconds in a conversation: a double press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds as a text snippet, which users can ask Siri about or save to the new Siri app to revisit later. A “Siri Recap” feature is designed to help users remember key moments from daily conversations — using ambient listening to take high-level notes, like takeaways from a team meeting or a parent-teacher conference. When Siri Recap is turned on, Apple Intelligence automatically generates a title and key points after a conversation, viewable in the new Siri app. A new “Sound Recognition” feature can listen for sounds like sirens, alarms, doorbells, and a baby crying, aimed at people who are hard of hearing. Apple says these audio intelligence features do not create or store audio recordings.

Both new smartwatches also get a redesigned health-sensing system, with an increased electrode surface area for better skin contact during ECG readings and redesigned photodiodes arranged in a ring for more efficient optical sensing, plus more power-efficient green LEDs for accurate heart-rate measurement during motion. The new system delivers more frequent continuous heart-rate data — background readings are now taken every five seconds all day, 60x more often than before. The watches also introduce readiness scores, which analyze recent activity, vitals, and sleep each morning into a single score of how prepared the body is for the day, along with a “Health Age” feature that compares a user’s key health metrics — including VO2 max and sleep — with their actual age.

The Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399, while the Apple Watch Ultra 4 costs $499.

Why it matters

Apple is betting that ambient, on-device audio AI — not a new standalone gadget — can compete with the wave of AI wearables and pendants, while trying to keep the always-listening tradeoff more palatable through strict no-recording guarantees.