Apple's camera equipped AirPods just leaked and the internet has already nicknamed them 'pervert pods'

Apple's next AirPods might have actual cameras built into them, and the internet did what the internet always does: renamed them "pervert pods" before Apple even confirmed they exist.

The leak came from an unlikely place, a release candidate build of macOS 26.7, where researcher Aaron Perris found a hidden demo video. It shows a man wearing AirPods, holding up a book, and asking Siri about it out loud. The voiceover explains: "With Visual Intelligence, your world becomes saveable. See something you like? Just ask me to save it for later."

Code in the same build references a "Hair Detected" warning, which pops up if your hair blocks the earbud's camera. That is about as strong a confirmation as a leak gets without Apple actually saying the word "camera" out loud.

Cue the internet immediately assuming the worst. Cameras hidden in something as socially invisible as AirPods, a thing people wear constantly without anyone questioning it, understandably sets off alarm bells. Nobody clocks an AirPod the way they clock a pair of Meta Ray-Bans or Snap Specs, and that is exactly the problem people are pointing to.

Here is the part getting lost in the panic. According to earlier reporting from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the cameras cannot actually take photos or record video. They exist purely to feed low resolution visual information to Siri, essentially giving the AI "eyes" so it can answer questions about whatever you are looking at, whether that is a book, a recipe or a street you are trying to navigate. Apple is also reportedly adding an LED light that turns on whenever the earbuds are sending visual data to the cloud, a transparency feature the camera equipped glasses crowd has been criticised for skipping.

None of that will stop the nickname sticking. "Pervert pods" is funny, it is catchy, and it is exactly the kind of headline that will follow this product around no matter how many safeguards Apple bakes in.

The bigger bet here is Siri related. These cameras are reportedly built to support Apple's long overdue AI overhaul, landing with iOS 27 in September, and the AirPods themselves could launch alongside new iPhones as soon as next month.

Whether you would actually wear a camera in your ear is another question entirely. Apple has the technical safeguards sorted, reportedly. Convincing the public is a completely different fight, and right now the internet has already decided which nickname is winning.