Apple upgrades watchOS with AI-powered features, including translation | TechCrunch

Apple’s watchOS is getting a few AI-powered upgrades, the company revealed at its Apple Event 2024 on Monday. Most were revealed at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, but Apple shed a bit more light during its keynote this morning.

The Translate app is coming to the latest version of watchOS, watchOS 11. Like on other platforms, Translate will leverage AI for speech recognition and translation in a range of different languages.

On the Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra, Translate can work without a phone connection. Apple says that they’re the only Apple Watch models with enough storage to download the necessary language models; you can download up to 20 models at a time.

AI is also improving Smart Stack, the watchOS feature that uses contextual information to show relevant widgets. Smart Stack will soon automatically add new widgets “when you need them,” Apple says — presumably based on factors like the time of day and your location.

In one last AI-powered enhancement, watchOS 11 has a new “photos” watch face that’ll use machine learning to identify and curate photos from your library.

Updated September 7, 4:47 p.m. Pacific with details about offline translation.