Apple’s camera-equipped AirPods appear in leaked video

Details

The first concrete look at Apple's camera-equipped AirPods has surfaced via a short demo clip found by MacRumors in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 Release Candidate. The video shows a man wearing the new AirPods holding up a book so Visual Intelligence can read the title — with Siri narrating that it can save things the user encounters. The AirPods appear as a slightly chunkier version of AirPods Pro 3 with longer stems and LED lights that indicate when data is uploaded to the cloud. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the cameras are designed for low-resolution visual input to power AI features — think turn-by-turn directions or real-time answers about the wearer's surroundings. They are not intended for photography or video capture. Apple positions these directly against Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. Privacy concerns similar to Meta's 'pervert glasses' backlash are already anticipated, given the stealthy form factor. Apple is reportedly also working on dedicated smart glasses. If macOS betas include demo assets this early, a September launch window aligned with new iPhones and an updated Siri is plausible — though details remain slim beyond what the demo clip shows.