Apple is working on adding cameras to the Apple Watch to enable artificial intelligence features such as visual intelligence over the next two years, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports in today’s Power On newsletter.
According to Gurman, the cameras will be located “inside the display” for the standard series of watches, while in the Apple Watch Ultra they will be placed on the side, next to the digital crown and button. Thanks to them, the Apple Watch will be able to “see the outside world and use artificial intelligence to provide relevant information,” which, he said, is also the plan for the camera-equipped AirPods headphones that Apple is rumored to be working on.
The visual intelligence features that will be used in these devices debuted on the iPhone 16, where they work with the phone’s camera to do things like add details from an event flyer to your calendar or look up restaurant information. This feature is based on AI models from other companies, but Gurman writes that Apple hopes to implement it with its own models by 2027, when he says the company plans to release the new Apple Watch and AirPods.
The visual intelligence and other artificial intelligence features that will appear in Apple devices will largely depend on the leadership of Mike Rockwell, who, as Gurman reported last week, is now responsible for the delay in the Siri LLM update. Rockwell was previously responsible for Vision Pro and will reportedly continue to work on visionOS. This software is expected to form the basis for another Apple device, which is likely to have a large artificial intelligence component, but this is likely still several years away: AR glasses in the spirit of the Orion concept that Meta showed last year.
