Apple unveils Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4 with an AI upgrade that can recap your day

At its Surprise and Shine event in Cupertino, Apple announced the Watch Series 12 and Watch Ultra 4. While the two models do not represent a major change in hardware design, Apple emphasized a range of software-driven improvements — most notably a set of audio-based features it calls "Audio Intelligence."

The Audio Intelligence suite includes Live Rewind, which allows the watch to display the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a short text snippet after a double press of the Digital Crown. Users can then query that transcript with Siri or save it into a newly introduced Siri app for later review. Siri Recap builds on ambient listening to produce concise summaries after conversations, automatically generating a title and key points when the feature is enabled. Apple also added a Sound Recognition mode that detects environmental sounds such as sirens, alarms, doorbells and a baby crying to aid users who are hard of hearing. Apple states these audio features do not create or store audio recordings.

On the health side, both watches include a redesigned sensing system intended to improve measurement quality. The ECG electrodes have a larger contact area for better skin connection, photodiodes are arranged in a ring to collect light more efficiently, and greener, more power-efficient LEDs are used to capture accurate heart-rate data during motion. Apple says background heart-rate readings will now be taken every five seconds throughout the day — a frequency the company describes as 60 times higher than before.

Apple is also adding new health-focused metrics: daily readiness scores that combine recent activity, vitals and sleep into a single indicator of how ready the body is for exertion, and a Health Age feature that compares key watch-collected metrics such as VO2 max and sleep against chronological age. The Apple Watch Series 12 starts at $399 and the Apple Watch Ultra 4 at $499.