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On Monday, a seemingly accidental leak found in Apple’s latest macOS 27 Release Candidate showcased the rumored upcoming camera-enabled AirPods using Visual Intelligence. The leaked video, uncovered by Aaron Perris, shows a man looking at a book and asking Siri via AirPods to analyze it using Visual Intelligence and save it for later.
With recent controversy around Meta AI glasses and Flock cameras, Apple’s timing around this particular product couldn’t be more dubious.
In July, Meta witnessed major privacy backlash against its since-successful line of AI glasses, which can record video and capture images of a user’s surroundings. Out of that backlash even came a trending app called Antizuck Smart Glasses Scanner, which ranked #3 on the U.S. iPhone paid App Store chart, claiming it could detect and alert you when Meta AI glasses are being worn nearby.
Meta can thank Flock for that…
Flock Safety operates roughly 120,000 license plate readers in the United States. Every camera logs the plate, make, model, color, bumper stickers, and even dents of anything that drives past, then drops it into a database that police departments can search and share nationwide.
This unprecedented level of surveillance has created a real sense of ick among Americans.
Now, while this puts Apple’s upcoming AirPods with cameras in a rather precarious situation, I think it will take a whole different approach and do something only it can.
My bet is one similar to what Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has reported. The cameras built into these AirPods will only capture at low infrared resolution, just enough quality to feed the data to Visual Intelligence or Siri AI. In other words, the cameras will likely be used only for contextual AI, and images will not be accessible to the user or Apple.
So while Meta AI glasses are very much a camera-first product, I think the incoming Apple CEO, John Ternus, is going to announce something that will make Mark Zuckerberg look even more reckless.
Now, for Apple to break the anti-flock surveillance state rage that is currently happening in the United States, it would need to execute the unveiling in September or whenever pretty flawlessly and with extreme focus on privacy, which I have no doubt it will.
Aside from all that, I’m also interested in whether this will lead to AirPods being banned in more environments, since it will become difficult for someone to discern from a camera-equipped model.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below! I read and respond to them all.
Security Bite is 9to5Mac’s weekly deep dive into the world of Apple security. Each week, Arin Waichulis unpacks new threats, privacy concerns, vulnerabilities, and more, shaping an ecosystem of over 2 billion devices. Every other week on the Security Bite Podcast, he sits down with experts in the field to break down the most pressing topics.
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