Less than six months after AirPods Pro 3 hit stores, Apple is already being tipped to roll out an even higher‑end version of its in‑ear flagship — and this one may literally be able to “see” the world around you. That sounds like marketing spin, but the rumor mill around camera‑equipped, AI‑powered AirPods is getting unusually consistent and paints a pretty wild picture of where Apple wants to take its wearables.

Right now, the expectation isn’t “AirPods Pro 4,” but a second tier of AirPods Pro 3: one regular model and another with built‑in infrared cameras tucked into each earbud. The standard AirPods Pro 3 sit at $249, while the camera‑equipped pair is rumored to land somewhere in the $299 to $349 range, positioning them as a premium add‑on for people already deep in the Apple ecosystem. Apple has never sold two different AirPods Pro SKUs side by side before, but it has just done exactly that with AirPods 4, offering ANC and non‑ANC versions — so the playbook is already written.

The big question, of course, is: why on earth would you put cameras in earbuds? Analyst Ming‑Chi Kuo has been talking about this shift since at least 2024, and his line has been consistent: these are not tiny GoPros in your ears, but infrared modules designed to sense your surroundings, your hands, and your orientation in space. Think depth‑sensing, proximity and gesture detection, not vacation photos. In practice, that could mean the buds “see” your hand in front of your face and let you flick in the air to skip tracks, adjust volume, accept calls or trigger Siri, without touching your phone or your ears at all. It’s the kind of interaction that sounds gimmicky on paper but becomes second nature if Apple nails the latency and accuracy.

Where this gets more interesting is spatial audio and Vision Pro. Because these infrared cameras can approximate the environment around your head, they can feed far more precise positional cues into Apple’s spatial audio pipeline, especially when you’re wearing Vision Pro or future AR glasses. Instead of just guessing where you’re looking from head tracking and gyros, the system could actually understand that you turned toward your TV, or that someone walked into your field of view, and subtly adapt sound placement, noise control, or transparency mode in real time. Picture walking through a city with transparency on: the buds could emphasize important sounds like vehicle horns or announcements while still drowning out the low‑value drone of traffic, tuned by what the cameras detect in front of you.

That’s where the “Apple Intelligence” branding slots in. Apple has been positioning Apple Intelligence as a system‑wide, on‑device AI layer that spans iPhone, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision Pro and — increasingly — wearables that can sense and understand your context. Visual Intelligence is a key pillar of that strategy: on iPhone, it already lets you point the camera at something and ask questions about it, translate text, or act on whatever’s on the screen. With camera‑equipped AirPods, Apple can extend that idea beyond the phone in your hand. The earbuds could act as roaming environmental sensors, pulling in visual data that Apple Intelligence uses to do small but very tangible things: remind you to pick up a package when you look at your front door, start a workout when you walk into the gym, or read out a sign or menu when you glance at it.

Of course, a lot of this is still speculative — even the naming is messy. Some reports have talked about “AirPods Pro 4,” others frame these as a higher‑end Pro 3 variant arriving in 2026 after the current Pro 3 hardware. The common threads are timing and feature set: a Pro‑level AirPods refresh with infrared cameras entering mass production in 2026, heavily tied to Apple Intelligence and Visual Intelligence, and pitched as part of a trio of new AI wearables alongside smart glasses and a screen‑less AI pin. Historically, AirPods Pro launches have clustered around September, so a fall debut alongside new iPhones and Apple Intelligence updates would make a lot of sense.

What’s just as interesting as the leaks is the reaction from the AirPods crowd. The early comment sections are full of people saying exactly what you might be thinking: “Can I just get AirPods that play music well?” or “Give us lossless, not cameras.” Audiophiles have been asking Apple to go all‑in on lossless wireless ever since Apple Music added lossless tiers, and for some of them, depth‑sensing cameras sound like a distraction rather than a must‑have feature. If Apple does end up splitting the line, keeping a “plain” AirPods Pro 3 and slotting this camera model above it is probably the only way to avoid alienating people who just want better sound, battery life, and reliability.

From Apple’s point of view, though, this is clearly about something bigger than earbuds. The company is quietly building a mesh of AI‑aware devices — Vision Pro, future smart glasses, an AI pin, and now AirPods with cameras — that all talk to the iPhone and to Apple Intelligence as a central brain. Your phone remains the hub, doing the heavy on‑device AI lifting, while these smaller gadgets become context collectors: microphones on your wrist and in your ears, cameras at eye level and near your head, sensors that know where you are, what you’re looking at and what you’re doing. If you zoom out, camera‑equipped AirPods are less about “smart earbuds” and more about turning your everyday gear into a distributed AI sensor network that can react in real time.

There are still big open questions — especially around privacy. Infrared cameras or not, the idea of any device “seeing around you” is going to trigger concern, and Apple will have to be very explicit about what’s processed on‑device, what never leaves the earbuds or iPhone, and how visual data is stored or discarded. The company’s pitch for Apple Intelligence so far has heavily leaned on privacy and local processing, and that story will be tested even more once you start putting cameras in places people aren’t used to having them, like their ears.

For now, though, the takeaway is simple: AirPods Pro are on track to become one of the most ambitious pieces of Apple’s AI puzzle. In the near term, expect a higher‑end Pro model that looks familiar but hides advanced infrared cameras, deeper integration with Vision Pro, and new Apple Intelligence tricks that blur the line between audio accessory and ambient AI assistant. Whether that sounds exciting, over‑engineered, or both will depend on how much you buy into Apple’s vision of wearables that don’t just sit on your body, but actively understand the world around you.