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When you use AirPods with the camera, you're going to have to be careful how you style your hair. Oh no, my hair is down. It's not working. Wait, it's working now. Oh no, it's not working. Oh wait, spy mode activated. It is believed that Apple is going to be adding a camera to your future AirPods. And some rumors say it would be called AirPods Pro Ultra, if it even comes out this year. But when I talk about a camera, I don't mean something that can take a photo. This would be an infrared camera, something similar to what's used in Face ID to unlock your phone using a light to scan surroundings in a way that you can't see with your eye. Now, this is a feature that has been gossiped about for
so long that other companies now are putting cameras in their headsets. There's Razer's Project Motoco. It's an AI headset that has cameras. We tested it at CES. There's a few Chinese companies that are poking at putting cameras into their earbuds. It's all part of this next evolution of earbuds that become your future AI device. But why? Why would you need cameras on your ears? If you look at Apple's recent moves, there does seem to be more than one reason, if Apple even goes through with it, because there are some issues with the idea. I'm Bridget Kerry and this is one more thing. Earlier this year, Apple purchased a startup that no one really heard of before. It was a company called QAI and it was pretty
secretive, but it was reported that this company specialized in silent speech technology. That means it could read your lips. Image sensors could read very small muscle movements in your face and jaw and lips. So, it would feed that into a machine learning or AI environment to know what you're saying even if no sound was coming out of your mouth. Okay. Okay, so if you put that tech inside of an AirPod, it could mean you can control things with facial expressions or maybe you say things without saying them. You know what I'm saying? The QAI founder also created Prime Sense. This was another type of infrared based technology that is now also owned by Apple. As my colleague Scott Stein reported, the Prime Sense IR
tech would help the Xbox Connect camera. Remember that? It would do a 3D scan of your room. Prime Sense was acquired by Apple in 2013 which became the True Depth camera system for Face ID. And this tech also is inside the Apple Vision Pro. It's what tracks your hand gestures for controlling the Vision Pro even when it's in the dark. Now, since 2024, we have heard about Apple working on AirPods that use IR sensors. Analyst Mingchi Quo has been talking about it and Bloomberg's Mark German has more recently been reported on Apple testing this very device and saying it can come out soon. But a leaker now claims Apple has suspended the idea. And a recent report from Wired has a source saying
that the project has been delayed. So clearly Apple has the skills to let you use AirPods to control things with gestures. It just might be a matter of when. Would these work alongside Apple's rumored smart eyeglasses? Well, here's a twist for you. What if there were no eyeglasses? What if the whole future of the AI wearable was just the AirPod? Then it would be able to sense the world around you. That means hand gestures, but also so much more. And it can be that assistant in your ear. This is not a new idea. We've discussed this before, but AirPods with AI would know more things about you. It would know what direction you're facing, what object is in front of you. It would know if you're
running or if I'm at home talking to my kid, which means it would know if there's another person in the room with me, or if I'm alone in the kitchen. Ah, now we're getting into the creepy factor. Yes, it is helpful to have Siri be more aware of my life. But Apple is a company that's all about privacy, and suddenly you have to wonder if your friend using AirPods in front of you is recording your surroundings with IR cameras. Or you might question what data it is picking up about your day-to-day life. So maybe that is why the project is not being revealed just yet. Meta glasses are a bit of a pervy spy tech item and Apple might not need to go down that road just yet. Also having cameras
in this teeny tiny thing, it's going to be a major battery drain. And what do you do with your hair? Because if your hair is down, it's not able to see the world around you. You got to have your hair up to use your AirPods. And maybe Apple is going to sell us Apple hair clips. I would buy an Apple hair clip, but I buy a lot of weird Apple things. Unlike smart glasses, people are used to wearing AirPods all the time. It's designed to be the kind of tech device you could just keep in your ear all day long as you talk to people. They act as hearing aids, but also they are hearing protection. And if you're traveling, this is also something that's becoming a realtime translator. So, we as a society
are getting used to the idea of just having people walk around with AirPods in their ears all the time and it not being a strange thing. And trust me, these things were strange when they first came out. Sticks in your ears looked pretty goofy and sticks with cameras could be longer and goofier. Keep in mind, it doesn't have to be creepy right away. Apple could first use IR cameras for something simple. Maybe it would go down into security protection or helping people with disabilities. Maybe it just gives you a way to talk to Siri silently. Maybe by scanning my jaw and ear shape. It will protect me if someone tries to steal my AirPods cuz it knows it's not my ear. Or maybe it could be used for health. Apple has been granted a patent to use AirPods
for bio health sensors. Now, it would be wild if the camera could also be tied to that and maybe look inside your ear. Do we want to know what's inside our ears? I don't know if I want to know. But however long it takes Apple to go down this path of putting more sensors into the AirPods, do not be surprised if we see other companies in the next year putting more cameras near your ears. Just do me a favor, don't share ear cameras, okay? Let me know what you think about cameras and earbuds. And I'll catch you next week with one more thing in the world of
