The results are in: Nobody wants cameras in their AirPods

In case you haven’t heard, Apple is reportedly planning to put cameras in AirPods. These have been rumored for a while, and from what we can gather, they will basically be the AirPods Pro 3, just with slightly longer stems to house cameras in both buds. If you immediately recoiled and are wondering why Apple would do that, you’re not alone. Based on our reader poll, an overwhelming majority do not want cameras in their AirPods.

Out of 1730 votes and counting, 88% of people voted with a resounding no. Only 6% said the AI vision features were exciting enough to get on board, and another 6% said they weren’t sure yet.

Now, to be fair, Apple has a long history of launching products people didn’t know they wanted until they had them. For instance, the original AirPods were met with mockery before they became ubiquitous. Camera AirPods could follow the same arc, but I’m skeptical. They sound like a more discreet, harder-to-notice version of Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses.

The intention is for the cameras to feed visual data to Apple’s AI, Siri, so you can do things like open your fridge and ask Siri for recipes based on what little ingredients you have left. As for how many people will actually do that versus, say, trying to snap photos of strangers seems optimistic to me. Sure, there are genuinely useful applications here, particularly for people with visual impairments. But that’s a niche use case for a product Apple is clearly betting will go mainstream, and our readers aren’t convinced it will.