As Tim Cook gets ready to hand over the job of Apple CEO to John Ternus, the future of Apple’s product line feels as mysterious as ever. Folding phones, touchscreen Macs and maybe even robotic HomePads could all be on deck in the next couple of years. But also, a whole wave of AI wearables. And as Apple’s WWDC developer conference looms, we still don’t know about the plans for the AI that would be needed to make them work.
Reports of a trio of AI wearable devices have been circling for the last year, including smart glasses, a camera-equipped pendant and camera-enabled AirPods. Add to these the Apple Watch and annually updated iPhones that they all would use to connect with, and it’s a lot of devices in the mix.
Watch this: Is Apple Finally Ready to Talk Future Wearables at WWDC?
While just about every other tech company on the planet can’t stop talking about AI — Google’s I/O keynote last month was 2 hours of nonstop AI adoration and AI-powered smart glasses — Apple’s been pretty quiet on the subject after its lackluster launch of Apple Intelligence in 2024. However, the cat’s already out of the bag on a key part of Apple’s AI plans, with a Google Gemini partnership for Siri announced back in January.
Now Apple needs to spill the details on what a Gemini-infused Siri will look like in the real world — and there’s no better time than WWDC.
Glasses like Google and Samsung’s upcoming models lean heavily on camera-aware AI that Apple doesn’t have yet.
AI is a missing piece for the next devices, and current ones
I don’t particularly love being enveloped in AI, or the resource drain both environmentally and economically that AI is causing right now. But a next generation of assistive wearable devices that Apple seems ready to build needs a different level of AI — awareness via cameras, better voice responsiveness and the kind of deeper text and voice analysis that virtually all other major AI platforms already offer.
But Apple still hasn’t built this advanced AI — an AI that can run across all its devices, privately handle data in a way that won’t disturb anyone and ideally do so without leading to more subscription hikes.
Apple could lean on AI running off its own hardware, an approach it’s already emphasized with Apple Intelligence. Mac Mini hardware has already become a popular go-to for running local AI servers. As iPhone and Apple Watch chipsets get faster every year, there’s more that Apple’s wearables could theoretically do without needing to connect to the cloud at all.
A completely missing layer is a more advanced visual intelligence, or multimodal AI. Apple does have bits of Visual Intelligence on iPhones, but it’s basic stuff. The sensor-studded Apple Vision Pro lacks a lot of assistive camera-aware AI services that Samsung and Google’s Galaxy XR headset already have, but the Vision Pro could easily run them using either the cloud or its pretty powerful M5 chip — if the AI ever comes to pass.
Besides AirPods, the Apple Watch can be Apple’s biggest AI entry point.
New wearables may roll out over years, but some are here now
It’s a two-part puzzle right now: Apple needs the new hardware that’s ready to use the AI, but it also needs the AI. The latest report from Bloomberg’s well-sourced Mark Gurman says Apple’s glasses are now on target for the end of 2027, while previous reports point to the camera-enabled AirPods launching by the end of this year.
Smart glasses, as they currently exist, are entirely AI-leaning devices. Meta’s glasses and Google and Samsung’s upcoming ones use microphones, voice chat and camera-aware live modes to translate, recognize and describe anything in camera range. They can even serve as an assistive pair of eyes for vision-impaired wearers. The devices need a phone connection to work and relay their AI to the cloud, but they also include a few offline functions that can still work with voice commands.
AI pendants are much the same story, just in a different form — largely for better battery life and as an alternative to wearing glasses.
AirPods could be first on deck for AI infiltration.
Camera-enabled Airpods, meanwhile, could be the first wave of new wearables this fall to introduce some sensors to work with Apple’s more advanced Siri. Even then, Apple might limit what those new AirPods can do early on, layering deeper assistive features later on when Siri’s Gemini-infused functions are more fleshed out.
I’d expect that the Apple Watch, on the other hand, could get AI benefits sooner. Google’s Gemini analysis of health data on the new Fitbit Air is a sign of where Apple could go with Health app data and its watch. The Apple Watch could also be a lot more responsive to voice commands than the limited subset of things Siri allows now.
Plus, the Apple Watch has a small and growing number of wrist gestures: Flicks and finger taps for now, but why not add others that could interact with AI? It doesn’t have a camera, but for voice and gesture interactions, it could start to show how AI might work on earbuds, glasses and even pendants.
WWDC will tell us more, I’m sure, but not everything. I’ll be there, and CNET will report on it all. I’ll loop back with more thoughts on all of this soon enough.
