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Apple's AI Wearables Expected to Lean Heavily on Visual Intelligence

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Apple's Visual Intelligence is expected to feature heavily in the company's upcoming set of AI wearable devices, which could include smart glasses, a pendant, and more advanced AirPods, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.

Visual-Intelligence-Feature.jpg

Writing in his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman said that hints dropped by CEO Tim Cook in recent months suggested the Apple Intelligence feature would be central to the devices, with Cook's comments following a pattern similar to how he foreshadowed the importance of health sensors and augmented reality before the launch of Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro, respectively.

On iPhone 15 Pro and newer models, Visual Intelligence lets you use the camera to learn more about places and objects around you. It can also summarize text, read text out loud, translate text, search Google for items, ask ChatGPT, and more.

Gurman has previously reported that Apple's upcoming smart glasses will have an advanced camera system with a high-resolution camera that's able to capture photos and videos, as well as a second camera that provides visual information to ‌Siri‌ and environmental context.

Meanwhile, the AI pin – should the device make it to launch – is said to have a lower-resolution camera to provide the AI with visual insight, but it won't be able to take photos or videos. The camera is always-on, recording what's around the wearer. Like the AI pin, the more advanced AirPods will have a low-resolution camera that's designed for information, rather than photo capture.

During a discussion about AI and Apple Intelligence on the company's holiday quarter earnings call, Cook touted Visual Intelligence as "one of our most popular features." Cook said it "helps users learn and do more than ever with the content on their iPhone screen, making it faster to search, take action and answer questions across their apps."

On another occasion, during a recent all-hands meeting with employees about AI, the Apple chief reportedly singled out Visual Intelligence as a standout element of Apple Intelligence – even though the feature relies heavily on OpenAI and Google technologies. Gurman argues that Cook "wouldn't be putting it at the forefront of his remarks if things weren't going to accelerate in that area soon."

Apple's smart glasses will compete with the Meta Ray-Bans. Apple is said to have recently provided its hardware engineering team with prototypes, and it is targeting a 2027 launch. Production on the glasses could begin as soon as December 2026.

AirPods with cameras are planned for as early as this year, while Apple's work on the AI pin is apparently in the early stages, and it's possible that it could still be canceled. If work continues, the AI pin could launch as soon as 2027.

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Article Link: Apple's AI Wearables Expected to Lean Heavily on Visual Intelligence
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/02/23/visual-intelligence-central-apple-wearables/
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Reactions: jw2002 and Z-4195
Visual Intelligence is one of the worst Apple UI's in recent history. It works fine, but nearly every time I use it I end up tapping out of the view, causing the result to disappear into thin air. The image you looked up? Poof, gone. Can't save it. Can't look it up again. So basically, it is useless, you are better off taking a picture and manually opening the chatgpt app.

It really needs a dedicated history section somewhere on the phone.
 
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everybodylovesramen said:
oh boy let’s waste more RAM on vaporware from the plagiarism machine.

tim cook doesn’t care about users he cares about stockholders.
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Not to mention battery life. Let’s take all these devices that are, by necessity (ie. AirPods, wearable “pin”, etc.) small, and add cameras and additional processing/hardware for questionable “features” few even asked for.
 
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I was none of the naysayers that were against Airpods or can't imagine us all wearing smart glasses. But I don't see the appeal of wearing an Apple pin or something designed by Apple around my neck. But let's see how it looks like and what it can do first.

e.g., if it can do things like
- tell me where I mislaid something last month
- or do a price comparison of an item I bought frequently over the last years by remembering the price labels it has seen and associate that with the product I'm asking for
- or identify a song I heard a few days back by searching for a paraphrased version of what I said at the time

Then I'd be interested. But atm, Siri can't even turn off an alarm in the next room or delete an alarm, if it has set 2 of them at the same time, let alone do multiple, combined commands. So unless this trinket is tiny, subtle, and either pretty cheap (<€ 100) or by magnitudes more capable than siri on a homepod or visual intelligence on an iphone, I'm sceptical. Multimodal, multi step logic that can follow up on various interactions one had with it earlier is probably the low bar here.

Visual intelligence is fine, I used it the first time to identify a plant last week and it worked (although it gave me a "maybe" — but it was an edible plant, so better cautious than sorry). I fully intend to use it again, maybe some time next year.
 
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Is visual intelligence, which I don’t have, the same thing as look up is in the photos app? If it is, it’s very inaccurate. I hope it isn’t and that look up gets better. It seems like a really great source of information and help if it were to work
 
If this is based on Gemini models, it will be useful. I've had Gemini help walk me through some complex electrical repairs (I have some experience with electrical things, just not the particular issue I needed to fix) by taking pictures of the issue and having it offer suggestions of what to try and do.
 
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jclardy said:
Visual Intelligence is one of the worst Apple UI's in recent history. It works fine, but nearly every time I use it I end up tapping out of the view, causing the result to disappear into thin air. The image you looked up? Poof, gone. Can't save it. Can't look it up again. So basically, it is useless, you are better off taking a picture and manually opening the chatgpt app.

It really needs a dedicated history section somewhere on the phone.
Click to expand...

This!
The UI of Apple’s recent products is bonkers. Visual Intelligence, Photos, Health, Fitness, …. They are all confusing, counter-intuitive and missing basic functionality.

Often, there’s an obvious way to go about things and Apple, by default, gives it a weird twist.
 
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Fraserpatty said:
Is visual intelligence, which I don’t have, the same thing as look up is in the photos app? If it is, it’s very inaccurate. I hope it isn’t and that look up gets better. It seems like a really great source of information and help if it were to work
Click to expand...
No. It’s the thing you activate with the Action Button. If you assign another action to that button, I don’t know how you can access Visual Intelligence. It’s just a very bizarre feature.

The related feature in Photos is called Visual Lookup and stays locally on your machine, while Visual Intelligence sends photos to Google and ChatGPT.

They both share a very confusing user interface.
 
neuropsychguy said:
If this is based on Gemini models, it will be useful. I've had Gemini help walk me through some complex electrical repairs (I have some experience with electrical things, just not the particular issue I needed to fix) by taking pictures of the issue and having it offer suggestions of what to try and do.
Click to expand...
Using any current AIs to help you work on potentially dangerous repairs is a terrible idea IMO, considering how prone to error and hallucination they are.

You would have been better off just going to the web & youtube to learn tips from some actual human experts, then have another go at your repair. Plus this way you actually understand and learn those new skills better.
 
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crococarbs said:
Using any current AIs to help you work on potentially dangerous repairs is a terrible idea IMO, considering how prone to error and hallucination they are.

You would have been better off just going to the web & youtube to learn tips from some actual human experts, then have another go at your repair. Plus this way you actually understand and learn those new skills better.
Click to expand...
when ever i use google now, i must scroll down until i find the reddit link to know clicking a link is help from real people.
 
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Reactions: MacAddict1978 and crococarbs
Visual Intelligence is one of the few iPhone features I can think of entirely dependent on third-parties (Google and OpenAI). Very very odd of Apple to release a product dependent on third party services. This is why Apple needs to build their own world knowledge model. Closet product I remember is the original iMac which its main value was the internet.
 
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