Apple CEO Tim Cook is spending more time talking up Visual Intelligence, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman thinks that’s a tell. In the latest Power On newsletter (February 22, 2026), Gurman links Cook’s repeated mentions of the feature to Apple’s longer-term push into AI wearables—including rumored camera-equipped AirPods and a camera-bearing pendant-style device.
Visual Intelligence is part of Apple Intelligence that answers questions based on what your iPhone “sees,” like a photo, a screenshot, or something captured with the camera. If you enable the ChatGPT extension, it can hand off certain requests to OpenAI’s model, and it can also route queries through tools like Google search and supported apps—but Gurman’s read is that Apple wants more of that visual understanding to be powered by its own models over time.
Why Cook keeps bringing up Visual Intelligence
Gurman points to Apple’s holiday-quarter earnings call, where Cook called Visual Intelligence one of Apple Intelligence’s most popular features. He also highlights an internal all-hands meeting where Cook referenced Apple’s massive installed base—about 2.5 billion active devices—as a key advantage in the AI race.
To Gurman, the repetition is the point. Apple doesn’t usually spotlight a capability this heavily unless it plans to expand it—or attach it to new experiences and, eventually, new hardware.
The shift from partners to Apple-built visual AI
Apple’s public messaging around Apple Intelligence leans hard into privacy, on-device processing where possible, and carefully scoped cloud computation. Visual Intelligence today can connect out to third-party tools (like ChatGPT, if enabled) and web/app search. But Gurman’s argument is that Apple ultimately wants the visual “brain” to be more natively Apple.
That direction lines up with the company’s broader research and development in computer vision and interfaces—everything from Vision Pro–adjacent work to published research like Ferret-UI Lite, which focuses on understanding and navigating app interfaces.
The rumored “third category” of Apple products
If Gurman’s read is right, Visual Intelligence isn’t just a feature—it’s a foundation for new devices that make sense only when Apple Intelligence can interpret the world in real time.
AirPods with cameras
The first big swing could be AirPods with small cameras, rumored for 2026 or later. Reporting suggests these wouldn’t be for taking photos. Instead, think low-resolution or infrared sensors that give Apple Intelligence basic context—enough to recognize objects, interpret nearby text, or support spatial cues without turning your earbuds into a pocket camera.
Smart glasses, but not “Apple Glass”
Apple’s long-rumored smart glasses are also part of the conversation, though the product name “Apple Glass” isn’t official. While earlier reporting pointed to a 2026 target, more recent expectations trend toward production beginning in late 2026 with a release in 2027. The near-term vision sounds closer to “camera + audio” glasses than full AR—more like the smart glasses category that already exists today, before Apple attempts a true augmented reality leap.
A camera pendant or pin
Then there’s the most curious rumor: a pendant-style device that could be worn around the neck or pinned to clothing, equipped with a camera to feed Apple Intelligence a view of the world. If it ships, it would effectively be a context engine—always ready to identify, translate, summarize, or remind.
What these wearables could actually do
Gurman floats the obvious “first wave” uses: identifying items (like ingredients on a plate), reading or translating text, and helping with quick lookups without pulling out your phone.
The more compelling idea is navigation that feels human. Instead of “turn in 50 feet,” visual context could enable prompts like “turn left at the sign” or “the entrance is just past the red awning,” based on landmarks your device can see.
Over time, the same visual layer could also become proactive—nudging you when it recognizes something relevant (a reminder when you pass a store, or a prompt when it spots an item you’ve asked about).
Why this isn’t happening overnight
Even by Apple standards, the hardware challenges are real. Camera-equipped AirPods would require serious miniaturization, power efficiency, and bandwidth management—especially if they’re meant to work seamlessly with an iPhone in real time. And smart glasses are notoriously unforgiving: weight, heat, battery life, and design all fight each other.
There’s also the broader Apple Intelligence timeline to consider. If core assistant capabilities and contextual intelligence roll out more slowly than expected, it could affect how quickly Apple can justify brand-new “AI-first” wearable categories.
Apple can probably pull it off—eventually. But if this is where Cook wants Apple to go next, the biggest clues may keep arriving the same way they did here: not through a product launch, but through which features he can’t stop talking about.