Apple's long-rumored AirPods with built-in cameras could arrive far sooner than expected. According to 9to5Mac, citing Mark Gurman's Power On newsletter, the company is developing two distinct variants of the product: one codenamed B798, still scheduled for 2027, and another dubbed B790 that appears to be further along and sits on the internal roadmap for a debut as early as this year. The optimistic reading is that the first generation of camera-equipped AirPods could land as soon as September. That claim carries weight because references to the B790 surfaced in the iOS 27 beta 2 code, spotted by developer Sam Henri Gold — strings describing a device capable of relaying two images captured by cameras on either side of the user's head.
It's worth grounding this in history. When the first rumors emerged back in 2025, Apple was said to be building an earbud with external cameras and artificial intelligence able to "understand" the surrounding world and feed information to the wearer — in practice, an extension of the Visual Intelligence feature that already exists on the iPhone. The original plan targeted a 2026 release, later pushed to 2027. With the B790 progressing faster, the calculus has shifted again. Expectations point to slightly longer stems than the AirPods Pro to house the lenses, plus an LED that lights up whenever data is being sent to the cloud. MacRumors, in its AirPods Ultra guide, also highlights the H3 chip and deeper Siri and Apple Intelligence integration.
The concept is compelling precisely because it inverts a core assumption about virtual assistants. Today Siri "listens" when you speak; with cameras, she would continuously "see" the environment. The analogy that comes to mind is a digital seeing-eye dog — a companion tucked into your ear that whispers context about whatever is in front of you: a restaurant menu, a street sign, the name of a monument — without you ever pulling your phone out of your pocket. Instead of holding an iPhone up to the world, the world gets narrated to you.
Yet the privacy question is impossible to sidestep. An always-on microphone has fueled debate for years; a camera aimed outward, perched on your ear, is a qualitative leap. That's why the LED indicator is more than a technical detail — it's a transparency signal. Apple has long sold privacy as a differentiator, and here it will have to prove that on-device processing and user control are real. Meta already faces skepticism over its camera-toting Ray-Bans, and Apple is arriving late to this segment — but with the argument that it's "late yet offering a different premise."
The deeper trend is the shift from a voice assistant to a vision assistant, and from audio wearables to perceptual wearables. What remains to be seen is how many users will accept a device that literally records the world from their own ears — and whether Apple can turn this into a new standard rather than a niche gadget. Will both variants reach market, or is the B790 merely a testing ground? That is the question the coming months will answer.
Sources: 9to5Mac, MacRumors, MacRumors, 9to5Mac
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