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This is probably due to concern about legal regulations around temporarily recording someone else's voice so it can be processed for translation. After all, the

• adastra22 1y ago
  That same issue would apply in California, which is a two party consent state.
• rsynnott 1y ago
  Also potentially AI Act concerns. Quite a lot of things involving our good friends the magic robots have a delayed launch in the EU, because they need to be compliant, whereas the space is for practical purposes completely unregulated in most other places.
• _boffin_ 1y ago
  How would this function in two-party consent states like California? My understanding is limited, but from what I've read, this might still violate consent laws unless explicitly disclosed—even in public spaces. I recently explored building a real-time STT system for sales calls to support cold-calling efforts. However, the consensus from my research was that, even if audio is streamed live without storage, consent laws could still present significant hurdles.
  • crazygringo 1y ago
    I think it really depends on the legal definition of recording or what it's used for. Common sense says that a recording that only exists for a few seconds, and is utilized only by the person a speaker is intending to speak to, and is never permanently stored, should be fine. And we can assume Apple has made sure this is legal in its home state of California. But EU law might not have sufficient legal clarity on this if it was written in a particularly open-ended way.
    • consp 1y ago
      If you put this in the data processing agreement and make those available ("GDPR" requirement in most countries) it's pretty much fine. You can probably use them for training and improving purposes if destroyed after a short duration as well. Speech is personal information but not medical so no special things apply. The laws in most countries are quite clear about non medical personal information and translation is a good grounds for usage of personal information as far as I can see. You have to specify usage however. Which is what most companies bark about because they want to store things for later use and unknown purpose. Which is frowned upon. You also need to protect personal data adequately which is deliberately vague. Storing it unencrypted for instance is not considered adequate. This also applies in transit.
  • gtirloni 1y ago
    At the point where you enable this feature (you wouldn't walk around with it enabled at all times because why?) the phone shows a screen asking you to get consent and the other person touches yes/no and that's it? Or would a signed form with a government seal be required?
    • ffsm8 1y ago
      IANAL, but from my understanding the user needs to get consent, not Apple. There would be no consent screen, apple would at most give a small dialog warning to the user that this usage is illegal (for the user). unless every participant has given consent
  • cyberax 1y ago
    > How would this function in two-party consent states like California? It won't. Regulations permit sound recording, as long as it's not stored. Speech-to-text and hearing aids for disabled people are an example of permitted uses.
  • tick_tock_tick 1y ago
    > even in public spaces Even in a two party state public spaces are fair game. The Constitution supersedes state law.
    • otterley 1y ago
      The Constitution has nothing to do with this. It constrains the Government, not private actors. And there’s no Constitutional right to a translation service. You’re probably thinking about warrantless recordings of conversations and the reasonable expectation of privacy requirement. This doesn’t apply here.
      • johncolanduoni 1y ago
        The Constitution can definitely restrict the ability of the government to pass laws regulating behavior, and two-party consent statutes are definitely laws that regulate behavior. Whether the object level question is true is a different matter, but I would assume so given that you can point a camera that records audio at people in public at all. Also, the US Constitution does constrain private actors, all the time. It bans slavery for a very simple example.
        • otterley 1y ago
          The Constitution does not forbid laws that require two-party consent to record a conversation. That’s what we’re talking about here. The constitutional view of the 13th Amendment is that it withdrew from government the power to promulgate or enforce laws that allowed slavery to exist. If a slave escaped after the 13th Amendment passed, the government then lacked the power to assist the former slaveholder in capturing and returning him. Similarly, without the power to enforce property rights, there became effectively no property interest in a slave.
          • johncolanduoni 1y ago
            I’m finding a lot of literature from NGOs specializing in US jurisprudence saying the first amendment has been interpreted to protect public, obvious recording[1]. If I tried to draw up an indentured servitude contract, what federal or state laws would explicitly forbid enforcing it myself? If state laws, do all states have equivalent laws? [1]: https://www.freedomforum.org/recording-in-public/ https://www.freedomforum.org/recording-in-public/
  • johncolanduoni 1y ago
    Is this much different than a hearing aid, even in technical detail? A hearing aid will have a small internal buffer containing processed audio. I’m not sure the law will care that the processing is more substantial as long as it’s on-device and ephemeral.
• d1sxeyes 1y ago
  More likely the second than the first. It’s already the case that you technically “record” the audio at one end and then transmit it to the other. I can also forward a caller to voicemail where their message is transcribed in real time, which is fundamentally the same mechanics. Or even more likely, as others have suggested, it’s Apple being petty and withholding features from EU users to put pressure on the EU.
  • chatmasta 1y ago
    I wonder if that translation is actually powered by OpenAI and Apple doesn’t want to pay them for inferencing on behalf of app developers. Or is it powered entirely by local models?
    • mcny 1y ago
      My understanding is live translations do not require an active Internet connection. > Live Translation is integrated into Messages, FaceTime, and Phone to help users communicate across languages, translating text and audio on the fly.1 Live Translation is enabled by Apple-built models that run entirely on device, so users’ personal conversations stay personal. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-elevates-the-iphone-experience-with-ios-26/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/06/apple-elevates-the-ip...
      • chatmasta 1y ago
        If it works, that is really impressive. I’m looking forward to trying it out. I’ve always wanted a real-life babelfish for eavesdropping on conversations in foreign language :)
  • deleted 1y ago
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  • simonh 1y ago
    Pressure on them to do what, if there’s nothing about this proscribed by the EU?
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• isodev 1y ago
  I think the explanation is a lot simpler - iOS to date does not correctly support most European languages. Using Siri in anything other than English is a pain and using the Translate feature is available in only a handful of countries. For anything remotely powerful enough, iOS will have to send voice to some server for processing and that’s a privacy shit show.
  • wqaatwt 1y ago
    What languages is it mean to translate then? Different accents of English?
    • twothreeone 1y ago
      Mostly Spanish and Chinese. Arabic and Hindi will already be difficult.
    • deleted 1y ago
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  • celticninja 1y ago
    That seems ridiculous, this is a translation feature. Do you think it is aimed at translating American to Canadian? Those pesky niche European languages are hardly spoken in the Americas so maybe that is the case.
    • anticensor 1y ago
      British to American.
      • rkomorn 1y ago
        Genuinely useful to me.
        • anticensor 1y ago
          I'd prefer American to British, though.
• deleted 1y ago
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• theshrike79 1y ago
  My theory is that it's #2. EU has defined Apple (but not Google(!)) as a "digital gatekeeper" and thus Apple has to comply to pretty much any part of their system being replaced with a 3rd party alternative. So if they bring this system in, something which is listening to people real time and using online AI models to translate things, EU might force them to let _any_ 3rd party AI replace it. And when someone installs TotallyHonest Co. AI to replace it and there's a massive data leak where they just stored every conversation as-is in an open S3 bucket, who gets the PR flak on HN? Apple, EU or TotallyHonest? The headlines will have "Apple" in them to drive clicks and TotallyHonest is maybe mentioned in the 3rd paragraph, which nobody will read or remember. The only winning move is not to play.
  • hopelite 1y ago
    I’m still waiting for the shoe to drop on the #1 matter, because as things like always-on listening devices and interior video surveillance spreads, people are not realizing that unless they are informing their visitors every time they enter their home (or you hang signs everywhere), that they will be recorded, in many states with two party consent laws, you are thereby committing a separate felony by recording them, with every recording. Technically even if you have your phone out and someone else’s voice triggered the “digital assistant” in a way where the recording was captures and sent somewhere (on device cases are an separate matter), you’ve committed a felony, regardless of whether you did so unintentionally. It’s how many crimes are committed, unintentionally. Because unbeknownst to many, e.g., just because someone is in your home does not mean they do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in spaces that are common, i.e., not the bathroom, e.g., a house cleaner or maybe a contractor or even a guest talking while you are not in the room. This generally only applies to the voice recording, not the video itself. I have been a bit surprised that some enterprising attorneys with a hunger for getting rich have not jumped on this matter already. Because you, the owner may have consented to being recorded by an always-on listening device, but your family members or your guests will likely not have done so. Or, even if some slick corporate attorney got you to agree to take on responsibility for notifying everyone as is necessary in each jurisdiction, that makes you even, legally speaking, knowingly engaging in felonious activity.
• moi2388 1y ago
  Nonsense. You are allowed to record any conversation you’re part of. It’s just not usable in criminal court (but it is even in civil court). You are also allowed to record and film in any public space.
• selkin 1y ago
  A device connected to a non-European Apple account can use this feature while physically located in Europe, so it's probably not consent.