Apple’s long-rumored camera-equipped AirPods may arrive sooner than anyone expected. According to Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, references to the new earbuds already appear inside the iOS 27 code, and the operating system is due to launch in September.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Apple has been developing camera AirPods under the codename B798 for years, with a 2027 target. But the company is famous for pitting rival internal projects against each other, and a second version — codenamed B790 — has apparently leapfrogged ahead. That model could debut before the end of 2026. Rumors point to the name AirPods Pro Ultra, though Apple hasn’t confirmed anything.
No, they won’t photograph your ear canal. The point of these cameras isn’t capturing selfies from the side of your head. Instead, low-resolution sensors — reportedly built into both the left and right earbuds — will scan your surroundings and feed that visual context to Siri, powering smarter, situationally aware AI responses. A small LED will flash whenever the cameras are active, echoing the privacy indicators found on smart glasses.
Design-wise, expect something close to the AirPods Pro 3, but with longer stems to accommodate the camera hardware. Pricing hasn’t been announced, though given the current AirPods Pro 3 sit at US$249, it’s fair to assume the Ultra will land above that.
The camera-in-your-ear approach is very much part of a bigger Apple strategy. Gurman says the company is also working on smart glasses aimed at health and fitness, where an onboard camera could track a wearer’s movements to generate fitness data. Apple, however, seems acutely aware of the reputational baggage Meta’s smart glasses have accumulated. PetaPixel recently reported that Apple is weighing two cautious paths: shipping glasses with no camera at all — still offering hands-free calls and audio playback — or including a camera that never records photos or video, feeding data purely to AI tools to help users navigate their environment. That’s precisely the logic behind these AirPods.
Crucially, Gurman notes Apple is likely to steer well clear of anything resembling Meta’s proposed “super-sensing” mode, which continuously analyzes a wearer’s surroundings. The company also reportedly won’t use customer recordings to train its AI models — a deliberate line in the sand as ambient computing gets ever more intimate.
For now, the AirPods Pro Ultra remain firmly in the development and testing phase. But if the iOS 27 code is any indication, the era of earbuds that can quietly see the world may be closer than we thought.
