AirPods with cameras could not arrive at a worse time — and I'll just say no

Here's something I never thought: What if my ears could see? The very idea of it conjures visions of earlobes with clusters of tiny, spider-like eyes.

Of course, now we're all considering this possibility thanks to what appears to be a stunning crack in Apple's typically rock-solid dome of product secrecy.

As we reported earlier this week , MacRumors dug into one of the macOS 27 release candidates and unearthed a short bit of video featuring a man wearing AirPods Pro earbuds but somehow using them with Apple Intelligence to save an image of a book for later.

The guy isn't wearing glasses, so it's not the rumored Apple iGlass or Apple Vision Wear at work here.

Instead, everyone believes this is the first confirmation that Apple is working on AirPods with cameras or "AirPods Vision," a pair of Bluetooth earbuds also equipped with vision sensors that, in concert with your connected iPhone, can use Apple Intelligence to recognize objects and then store information about them for retrieval later.

Here is your first look at AirPods with Cameras in action using Visual Intelligence.This video file came from macOS 26.7 RC pic.twitter.com/yo7RI4MCeu August 18, 2026 I spent some time staring at the bud in the guy's ear, and it looks, from this angle, exactly like the current AirPods Pro 3 I currently wear.

I assume that whatever sensors the buds are using live on the opposite side, facing out so they can "see" what you see.

I also got caught up in the book the guy is memorizing.

Could, Should, Might, Don't , is a real book by former design head for Google X, Nick Foster.

In it, he dives into four mindsets of, I guess, future ideation and innovation: "Could" revolves around the wild possibilities (probably why we watch and love Star Trek ).

"Should" is sort of the realist's approach to what we should do based on on-the-ground facts and data.

"Might" appears to combine elements of the first two.

"Don't" is the risk-averse part.

It's all the reasons people don't want Artificial General Intelligence or robots running AGI living with, working with, and maybe ultimately controlling us.