With AI hardware, tech companies are pushing the definition of what does and doesn’t constitute a recording. For most of gadget history, it’d be reasonable to assume that a device with a microphone or camera is either recording you or it isn’t; it’s either on or off, without much gray area. Microphones capture sound. Cameras capture images. That data is saved onto a device. Sometimes, it’s also sent to the cloud for processing. That data is a preserved instant in time and is therefore a recording.
We can’t just change the definition of ‘recording’
Tech companies with new AI hardware want you to agree that always-listening, often-recapping devices don’t count as recording.
We can’t just change the definition of ‘recording’
Tech companies with new AI hardware want you to agree that always-listening, often-recapping devices don’t count as recording.
Perhaps not anymore.
The Shift Toward Non-Saving AI Cameras
Reports indicate that Apple is working on a smart home camera that doesn’t save video recordings. Instead, AI uses the visual data to create text snippets that describe what’s happening around your home. Supposedly, it’ll support facial recognition, but without video footage. The idea is that it still protects some privacy, a mechanism similar to how rumored future AirPods cameras might also work.
This approach parallels Apple’s Audio Intelligence features, such as Live Rewind and Siri Recap. The former produces a transcript of the past 15 seconds, whereas the latter can generate high-level summaries of the conversations you have throughout the day.
All Audio Intelligence features are opt-in, with Apple stating in its Music Detection language that it does not record audio.
But once a song is detected, is that not a record that you heard that song?
In other words, Ray-Ban Meta glasses take photos and record video, which is stored on your phone. This rumored Apple approach would mean cameras can see you, microphones can hear you—but neither is officially saving anything in traditional video or audio formats.
Apple’s publicly communicated philosophy suggests these features don’t save any audio. The raw data is deleted once it’s finished processing in a secure enclave. Any information sent to the cloud utilizes private cloud compute, making it inaccessible to third parties.
Other industry players are exploring similar concepts. Google executives have discussed the possibility of smart glasses processing visual data in the environment using AI without saving footage for posterity, allowing the camera to act purely as an active sensor.
Navigating Consent and Semantics
By these definitions, something must be preserved and reviewable to be considered a recording. But wouldn’t any text transcripts generated by a smart home camera or smartwatch count as preserved and reviewable? Or, in trying to make AI hardware more palatable, are tech companies relying on narrow legal definitions?
It might seem like a semantic argument, but multiple distinct concepts regarding data retention are currently being tested.
Before gadgets could always listen, they slotted into public and private spaces more seamlessly. This new crop of gadgets, however, asks you to be a more active steward of other people’s privacy. Humans live, work, and hang out in a multitude of environments—some private, others public, and plenty in a gray area. While human memories are colored by biases and perspective, digital recordings are objective.
Signaling Intent and Ambiguous Hardware
There is also the question of signaling intent in the absence of universally understood norms. Take Meta’s smart glasses, which use a white pulsing privacy light to indicate when someone is recording video. Because the universal color for recording lights is traditionally red, a less tech-savvy person may not recognize a white light as a warning. Furthermore, white privacy lights are easily obscured, and other AI hardware manufacturers are not obligated to follow the same signaling conventions.
The potential for obscured or missing indicators complicates our ability to notice recording devices in person.
Even more confusing, products that can record increasingly look like products that can’t. If we start adding cameras to smart glasses that don’t record traditional video footage, how will consumers tell them apart from pairs that do? If an Oura Ring, which lacks a microphone, looks identical to a ring that records audio, what is the average person supposed to do?
The True Source of Unease
Right now, hardware seems to be the main focus of the surveillance tech debate. There is a sense that getting rid of cameras solves the problem, but the queasy feeling often comes from knowing a preserved snippet of you can exist in someone else’s device with no knowledge of how it will be used.
This is where all the tension surrounding AI hardware converges. For AI to be truly personal, it must see what you see, hear what you hear, and remember your day-to-day actions. The incentives for Big Tech to collect this data are clear, but what society gets from this tradeoff remains vague.
This Vocci Ring can record conversations and its privacy light is extremely hard to notice.
Regardless, tech companies have decided to integrate AI into existing gadgets while inventing new form factors. Phones and wearables are just the beginning; these considerations will soon head to smart homes, TVs, laptops, tablets, and headphones.
What we allow these AI gadgets to remember will rewrite culture. This is why a societal consensus must be reached on what constitutes a recording—and who gets to define it.
