Apple’s Bold Leap: Smartwatches and AirPods with Cameras | Image Source: 9to5mac.com
CUPERTINO, California, March 22, 2025 – Apple silently remodels the future of usable technology, and it’s not just a thin design or a longer battery life this time. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports, Apple is actively exploring the integration of cameras and advanced visual intelligence driven by AI into its Apple Watch and AirPods lines. This represents an important change in the way we think about articles to wear, not only as accessories, but as intelligent companions capable of seeing and interpreting the world around us.
While Apple Mobiles are famous for health surveillance and seamless ecosystem integration, this next step indicates a deeper ambition: turning devices like Apple Watch and AirPods into visually conscious artificial intelligence centers. The goal is to go beyond passive notifications or skill monitoring in a realm where your watch or helmet can literally see and understand your environment, potentially revolutionizing how users interact with your environment.
What does Apple plan for Apple Watch?
According to Bloomberg, Apple is working on several iterations of its next generation Apple Watch, both the standard line series and the ultra-resistant model, which will have integrated cameras. The inclusion of a camera is more than a material modification; it opens the door to visual computing in the user powered by AI. These cameras could activate features such as object recognition, bar code scanning and contextual consciousness – think about pointing your wrist in a restaurant and getting instant exams or nutritional data from your food.
In the standard watches of the series, the device can be directly integrated into the screen, possibly thanks to sub-display technology, although Apple has not completed this design. For the Ultra model, however, the device could be placed on the side near the digital crown. This lateral placement benefits from Ultra’s largest body and can help users target and interact with the camera, especially when using your wrist to scan or capture specific objects or gestures.
Apple’s internal target for these camera-equipped watches is 2027. This timeline provides a wide space for technology refinement, especially since Apple is supposedly looking to manage more of its internal AI processing than relying on external services such as OpenAI ChatGPT or Google. Such a change would ensure better protection of privacy, better performance control and greater ecosystem integration.
Why is Apple now focusing on visual intelligence?
According to Gurman’s report, the camera’s initiative is closely linked to Apple’s broader impulse for artificial intelligence under the term “Visual Intelligence”. The aim is not only to allow users to take photos, but also to empower devices to understand what they see. Whether to identify milestones, read signs or recognize objects, visual intelligence is a big leap from Siri’s vocal axis, which has often left competitors like Alexa or Google Assistant behind.
Gurman points out that Apple wants to move this technology away from third-party AI services and build its own models. This not only reflects Apple’s emphasis on privacy protection, but also provides the company with stronger control over how data is processed and processed. According to 9to5Mac, these internal IA models could eventually allow Apple devices to operate independently of the cloud for certain tasks, thereby improving speed and reliability.
This is not the first time Apple has made a strategic pivot in response to delayed features. Siri, a pioneer of AI’s voice, has been defeated in recent years. In response, Apple recently reassigned its executive team, appointing Mike Rockwell, formerly known as the Vision Pro team, as Siri’s new leader. Rockwell’s hardware experience could be invaluable to integrate AI deeper into the Apple device line.
What about the AirPods with cameras?
The idea of AirPods with cameras may seem even more futuristic, but Apple’s vision appears based on function rather than fantasy. According to a June 2024 report by supply chain analyst Apple Ming-Chi Kuo, the technology giant plans to produce AirPods in bulk with infrared cameras (IRs) by 2026. These cameras are not intended for photography but for spatial consciousness and gesture control.
“The infrared component would be similar to Face ID sensors used on the iPhone,” Kuo said. “It’s more about improving the user experience than saving.” With Apple’s Vision Pro headset, these camera-equipped AirPods could amplify the audio of space by tracking where a user’s head is turned and adjusting the audio accent accordingly. For example, if you look at a really mixed movie and turn to a character who talks out of the screen, the audio in that direction could automatically be more prominent.
Controlling the gesture in the air is another border. Imagine the ski slopes or adjust the volume simply by shaking the hand. These capabilities could fundamentally change the way we interact with devices in environments where voice or touch is not convenient, in a noisy meter, for example, or working.
When can users expect these products?
Gurman and Kuo suggest that Apple Watch and AirPods with on-board cameras are provisionally established for an exit window between 2026 and 2027. However, as with any ambitious Apple project, these dates could change depending on technological and manufacturing progress. Apple is known for its refinement and sometimes stagnation, characteristics that do not meet its performance standards or user experience.
This development cycle allows Apple to align hardware software and innovation. It also gives the company time to build proprietary AI models capable of managing the complex tasks required for visual intelligence on devices. By moving away from reliance on AI’s external models, Apple can also strengthen its security and confidentiality value proposition, two pillars of its brand philosophy.
What challenges could Apple face?
Adding cameras to the candlesticks is not a small feat. Concerns about privacy, the limitations of form factors and battery life are enormous. Cameras raise obvious surveillance concerns: Will users feel comfortable with devices that could record other devices? Apple must respond to these concerns in a transparent manner, perhaps with clear visual indicators or opt-in authorizations.
Then there is the question of energy consumption. Visual processing requires a lot of resources, and thinning high-performance sensors and processors in small mobile phones requires technical innovation. Not to mention that maintaining lightweight, elegant and water-resistant devices – all current Apple Watch outlets – while inlay cameras are an important design challenge.
In addition, direct integration of AI characteristics into these wearables means strengthening the processing capabilities in the devices. Apple’s custom silicon, such as the H2 chip in AirPods Pro or the S9 chip in recent Apple watches, will likely evolve to meet these new requirements. But chip development is costly and time consuming, and delays in silicon preparation could stimulate product launches.
How does this fit into Apple’s largest ecosystem?
This movement does not take place in a vacuum. Apple’s broader strategy is increasingly on the synergy between devices, from iPhone and MacBook to Vision Pro and HomePod. By making clothing more context conscious, Apple can allow experiences of richer crossover devices.
For example, imagine an Apple Watch that can identify a document, transmit it to your MacBook for editing, and coordinate with your AirPods to read it aloud, all through perfect visual intelligence. Or AirPods that adjust ambient sound levels depending on whether you walk in a busy street or in a quiet office. These are not just isolated improvements; These are interconnected layers of intelligence sewn into the Apple ecosystem.
This integration becomes all the more essential as regulators push Apple to open iOS to increased competition, particularly in the European Union. By making hardware smarter and more indispensable, Apple can strengthen its ecosystem against the dilution of platforms and fragmentation of application stores.
“The future of clothing is not just about collecting data, but about interpreting and acting in real time,” said a former engineer, Apple, familiar with the project. “With AI and cameras, you give these devices a new meaning: the view. And that changes everything.”
Essentially, Apple’s exploration of visual intelligence for wearable items suggests a recalibration of its innovation compass. It’s not just about doing more with less - it’s about giving cell phones a kind of consciousness that, until now, only existed in science fiction films. And if Apple does it well, this future may be closer than we think.
The next two years could be a decisive chapter on Apple’s journey, not only by claiming its AI advantage, but also by reimagining what can be worn, the devices not only linked to our body, but adapted to our world may be.
