So Much For the 'PervPods'
As if a leaked video of the AirPods with Cameras – which I wish they'd call 'EyePods' but I'm guessing they're going to call 'AirPods Pro 4 with Visual Intelligence' – wasn't enough, some leaked code also within the release candidate of macOS Tahoe 26.7 now seems to give away a few more intriguing details about the device. Namely, how the cameras may actually work.
And actually, this leak could be somewhat useful to Apple because the last one – again, the video of them in action – had people concerned that Apple was about to release some surveillance tech for the masses. Which is a nicer way of saying "PervPods", as the internet has so wonderfully coined.
Apple, of course, prides themselves on their reputation with regard to user trust and security. Two traits which Meta, Apple's would-be main competitor in the nascent AI wearable space, decidedly lacks. Was Apple really going to risk throwing away such trust to put some cameras on your ears? This latest leak points to how Apple is clearly trying to get around this issue. As discovered by MacRumors forum member mactracker and summarized by Tim Hardwick, a few key bits:
AirPods support periodic image capture but not video: The cameras take internal still frames for Visual Intelligence to process, rather than "taking pictures" or recording video. In "active" mode, the framework can request a synced pair of images, or it can receive a capture rate, where pairs of stills are continually sent at the specified rate.
I repeat: no video. In my column last week I suspected exactly this scenario. While Apple will downplay the "picture taking" capabilities of such a device, the reality is that they have to capture some sort of image to make their systems work. But video seems a bridge too far, at least for now.
Active and passive capture modes use different resolutions: In "active" mode, likely triggered by the user via Siri, the AirPods capture a 640x640 image and return a processed 1024x1024 image. "That's about 0.4 megapixels of sampled image data, and a little over 1 megapixel for the output frame," mactracker explains. In "passive" mode, they capture a 320x320 image that can return a 320×320 or 512×512 output. "These are capture-specific resolutions, and the physical sensor's native resolution may be larger," adds mactracker.
640x640 is a comically small, low-resolution image. Technically, it's 0.41 megapixels. For comparison, the main camera on the iPhone 17 Pro is 48 megapixels. That's a full two orders of magnitude. Yes, the processing pushes that image to just over one megapixel – a threshold that was state of the art in... 1991.
Interestingly, the "passive" mode cuts such small resolutions in half. Now we're talking early web graphics sizes for images. The kind of images that wouldn't completely clog a 14.4 baud dial-up modem.
In other words, if people intend to use these AirPods as surveillance tech, it's going to be pretty shitty surveillance tech. There are literal kids toys that will take far better images. A Fisher-Price spy cam would do an infinitely better job.
Some processing happens directly on AirPods: The code mentions "peripheral inference," or on-device detection of whether a person is in view.
If true, given the sheer literal size of the AirPods, this would be insanely impressive. But again, those image sizes help! And this will certainly help that privacy narrative if you don't have to send all of those images – even if their comically low resolution state – to your iPhone. Or worse, the cloud.
Each AirPod likely has a capture indicator light: The framework contains code that allows it to remotely control a hardware indicator and its brightness, suggesting the AirPods have a light to let other people know when they are capturing still images.
Yeah, I also assumed this would be the case, as it's sort of the bare-minimum privacy norm if you have any sort of capture capabilities on a wearable. And this points directly to an issue Apple still could have here...
While they'll downplay any talk of "capture" and certainly not frame these as "cameras", the reality remains that – assuming the above capabilities ship – both categorizations are technically true. Apple can and will talk up the low-resolution and on-device work, but some people will still just hear and see wearable cameras here. And while I suspect that society will eventually grow numb to such tech, just as we have with cameras capturing/recording most things thanks to our phones, it's going to take some time.1
In that regard, perhaps it's good that these newfangled AirPods were apparently delayed until 2027 (despite the leak). Apple can let Meta keep taking the early backlash as the industry still grapples with 'Glasshole' scars.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 With the AI element of all this just further exaccerbating the issues... ↩
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