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Zack Whittaker
@zackwhittaker.com

Watching this Apple event tout how iPhones will soon be able to record ambient audio/conversations and transcribe "high level notes" for you. It's billed as private and end-to-end encrypted, but I think the bigger harm is the normalization of always-listening devices. It's creepy and not normal.

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353 reposts992 likes

ForeverExpat
@guiri99.bsky.social

If you’ve ever read transcripts of live events you know how many mistakes the Speech to Text AI makes. Sometimes the mistakes are funny and obvious. But other mistakes are dangerous and not caught until too late. And that’s with explicit speakers with similar volumes speaking in turn.

ForeverExpat
@guiri99.bsky.social

And this feature will collect “Ambient” noise with accents, coughs, different speaker volume levels, esoteric vocabulary, etc.? The tech I’ve seen is very far from handling this, even one assumes it is a feature socially and ethically acceptable by all parties.

Allen3D
@hex720.net

How is this legal in PA where all parties have to be notified of recordings? Not sure how this will be permitted in work places. Especially in defense.

Matt
@sensibleish.bsky.social

Presentation said audio isn’t stored at all. Transcription is live (then presumably summarized at some interval). Guessing that isn’t “recording” for purposes of those laws, but someone qualified will have to write an explainer.

Matt
@sensibleish.bsky.social

Did that apply to electronically transmitted audio only (like an online meeting), or also to live audio? What if the output available to the user of the system is only a summary, not a verbatim transcript? Lots of interesting potential nuance (which I have no qualification to assess).

ThorntonText
@cyranic50.bsky.social

Somewhere there’s got to be a more civilized country with simple law that says the microphone isn’t activated until you intend to use it. Why is that so hard for us here?

Lizi Patch
@lizipatch.bsky.social

I think we all know it’s not hard. It’s just vastly preferential for the tech companies to normalise opt out over opt in. As has been the case for a long time now.

Jes
@jessicaferem.bsky.social

I can only imagine every iphone suddenly getting SUPER hot all the time because your grandma doesn't know that their phone has to process everything because the option is turned on.

Sansnom
@sansnom.bsky.social

Even if we can opt out, which... well who knows, it doesn't mean other people do. Everything we do, all the time, should be assumed to be recorded, transcribed, uploaded to AI, and used against us.