Apple’s AirPods are arguably the most iconic headphones ever. The small, glossy, stylish buds are lauded for both their sound and design and are worn by hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
But come next year, those hundreds of millions of AirPods owners might face a problem they never envisioned: being labeled as creeps or perverts—all for innocuously wearing one of the most instantly recognizable tech gadgets ever made.
That’s because Apple will reportedly release a new AirPods model in 2027 with built-in cameras. Doing so poses an existential threat to the brand reputation of Apple’s most successful product since the iPhone.
From ‘glasshole’ accessory to ‘pervert glasses’
If there’s one thing that can be said about wearables with built-in cameras, it’s that the public has a deep mistrust of the people wearing them. This is because, historically, many camera-enabled wearables have done a poor job communicating to bystanders when the wearer is recording them. It doesn’t help that wearers can often disable or obscure the public-facing alerts manufacturers build into these devices that let others know they may be being recorded.
This uncertainty has caused many people, unjustly or not, to assume the person wearing the wearable is a creep or pervert, and indeed, entire terms have arisen to pejoratively describe such wearers.
In the early 2010s, people quickly labeled Google Glass wearers “glassholes.” In the 2020s, anyone wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses is often deemed to be wearing “pervert glasses.” When it came to Google Glass, the glasshole blowback got so bad that Google posted a reminder to Glass wearers not to be creepy.
“[Don’t ]Be creepy or rude (aka, a ‘Glasshole’),” the company wrote in a tip sheet to its users in 2014. “Respect others and if they have questions about Glass don’t get snappy. Be polite and explain what Glass does and remember, a quick demo can go a long way. In places where cell phone cameras aren’t allowed, the same rules will apply to Glass. If you’re asked to turn your phone off, turn Glass off as well.”
But while a “glasshole” implies you were merely being a disrespectful jerk, the “pervert glasses” label applied to Meta’s smart glasses implies something much worse. And indeed, there is no shortage of reports that some wearers of Meta’s smart glasses are using them in privacy-invasive, nonconsensual ways.
Now, concerns about the misuse of so-called “pervert glasses” have become so widespread that there are calls in multiple countries to introduce legislation banning or limiting their use. Meta is preemptively even working on a “kill switch” feature to disable the camera capabilities of its glasses, and has already updated its software to automatically stop recording if someone covers the recording warning light on the frames.
Meta’s moves to reassure the public and governments may be too little, too late, however. The device’s reputation may already be tarnished beyond repair. Indeed, some of Meta’s own smart glasses customers already seem to think so. Owners are reportedly leaving them at home to avoid public shame and being labeled as perverts.
And that’s a problem for Apple’s AirPods—and every person who wears them.
Are all AirPods about to be labeled ‘PervertPods’?
For years now, reports have suggested Apple was working on AirPods with built-in cameras. In August, MacRumors published a video made by Apple confirming such a device is in the works. In the video, a man wearing the camera-equipped AirPods asks the devices to identify and remember the name of a book he is holding.
Bloomberg says these AirPods are on track for a 2027 release. But once they go on sale, if the public blowback against Meta’s “pervert glasses” is anything to go by, owners of even existing AirPods are potentially set to become social pariahs overnight.
This is because, unlike Meta’s smart glasses, which are obviously bulkier than the “dumb” frames people have worn for centuries, the camera-equipped AirPods shown off in Apple’s video look nearly identical to today’s AirPods: small, shiny white buds. That means any public backlash against the camera-equipped AirPods is likely to hit all AirPods users. The AirPods are already so small; who can really tell which model you are wearing?
Once camera-equipped AirPods go on sale, it’s reasonable to assume that, because they look indistinguishable from other models, bystanders will not be able to tell whether someone is wearing the camera models or the regular ones. As a result, they may become suspicious of all AirPods users.
Suddenly, someone wearing AirPods Pro 2 (from 2023) or AirPods 4 (from 2024) may get distrustful or even contemptuous looks from bystanders. In other words, the inevitable “PervertPods” label wouldn’t be limited to camera-equipped 2027 models and above. Such a label would tarnish the entire AirPods brand and make people cautious of users no matter which model they use.
Can Apple prevent AirPods backlash?
So, how can Apple stop this brand destruction?
It doesn’t have many good options. Perhaps the most practical one would be to make the camera-equipped AirPods visually distinguishable at a glance from non-camera-equipped AirPods. Apple could do this by making the camera-equipped AirPods a different color, like midnight blue or cosmic orange.
However, it’s unlikely that Apple would be willing to ditch the AirPods’ now-iconic shiny white color scheme.
Short of this, Apple will probably rely on changing public perception: educating the public that its camera-equipped AirPods can’t save video and are used only to recognize objects (if that’s what the devices will indeed do).
But this may not be enough. Apple gave its new Apple Watches, introduced last month, the ability to always record surrounding conversations. The company highlighted that these recordings were never accessible to Apple or the users, and once they had been processed by Siri AI, they would be deleted. Yet despite Apple designing the feature to be privacy-preserving, even the company’s own fan base has expressed serious reservations about it.
This leads me to believe that, for the brand’s sake, Apple should consider scrapping the camera-equipped AirPods for now. The general public, once eager to embrace every new gadget Big Tech released, is increasingly wary of wearables becoming surveillance tools or enabling nefarious individuals to secretly monitor them.
Given that this distrust will likely not abate anytime soon, Apple’s wisest move may be to set aside its visual ambitions for the device in favor of focusing on improving what the AirPods already do best: delivering world-class sound quality into our ears.