Silicon Valley is always on, and so are the recording devices.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

Wearables aren't just for tracking steps or monitoring heart rates anymore.

In AI-crazed Silicon Valley, a new crop of tech-enabled accessories has taken hold,

and they could be listening to everything we say.

There's the limitless lapel pin, plod pendants, and bee bracelets. Then there are the

inconspicuous apps like granola, quietly running on phones or watches. All of them promised to help

users better organize their lives by transcribing notes on everything they say. And of course,

anything anyone in their vicinity says, too.

Raya Jetta is a tech culture reporter at the San Francisco Standard,

who recently reported on the new eavesdropping wearables in Silicon Valley.

People that I spoke to for this story, a lot of them are AI recording evangelists. They record every part of their lives. And for them, it's about having a thought partner that's always with

them. They say that they can be more present in meetings because they're outsourcing, note-taking

to these AI recording devices. The promise of these devices is that it can really supercharge your life

and make you much more efficient. And how would you describe how common these have become

in kind of greater Silicon Valley? In your reporting, you describe several vignettes where, you know,

these devices are just seem to be everywhere, every party, you know,

that's at the meeting has one or several.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, so there's the hardware component of it and then the software component of it.

The software side, I would say, is much more ubiquitous.

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