Apple is planning to launch a camera-equipped version of its AirPods in 2027, according to Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman. The move is designed to push the company deeper into the AI device market, giving its earbuds a new way to sense and understand the world around the wearer.
The camera-enabled AirPods won't arrive alone. According to Gurman, Apple has timed the launch to coincide with what is shaping up to be a landmark product lineup: a set of 20th anniversary pro iPhones — marking two decades since the original iPhone debuted in 2007 — and a second-generation foldable iPhone. That combination suggests Apple is treating 2027 as a major hardware reset moment.
The Verge highlighted that earlier AirPods Pro 3 renders have shown live translation as one potential use case, hinting at how onboard cameras could feed real-time visual context into AI features — think pointing your ears at a menu in a foreign language or getting audio descriptions of what's in front of you.
Apple has watched rivals experiment with AI-forward wearables, and camera-equipped earbuds represent an attempt to extend the company's ecosystem into ambient, always-available intelligence rather than phone-centric AI. The 2027 window also gives Apple time to refine its Apple Intelligence platform before asking consumers to trust a camera sitting next to their heads all day.
If the timeline holds, 2027 could be Apple's most consequential hardware year since the original iPhone launch — and the AirPods camera may be the sleeper product that defines what AI wearables actually look like at scale.