Apple’s next AirPods might have small cameras attached to the earbuds and have new features.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg said that Apple is ‘continuing to explore’ the possibility of an AirPod with a camera. The analyst mentioned that the newly-appointed Siri development head Mike Rockwell could bring in the expertise needed to ‘embed AI’ and build a camera inside the AirPods that could collect data for AI. For this to happen, the ‘camera’ would have to have infrared technology. This was mentioned last year by Ming-Chi Kuo, who said that Apple will mass produce the next-generation AirPods and it will have infrared cameras.
Kuo further iterated that the infrared sensors could offer enhanced spatial audio when paired with the Vision Pro and work similarly to Face ID. The camera is also believed to allow ‘in-air gesture control’ for hand movement detection. The new AirPods with a camera could have a launch date as soon as next year.
