{"id":651905,"date":"2026-05-19T07:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/651905\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T07:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T07:10:18","slug":"someone-shoved-cameras-into-sony-earbuds-and-now-theyre-basically-smart-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/651905\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Shoved Cameras Into Sony Earbuds, and Now They\u2019re Basically Smart Glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re excited about the idea of Apple shoving cameras into AirPods<\/a>, I\u2019ve got good news: you now have an early preview of what that might look like, thanks to researchers from the University of Washington at Seattle.<\/a><\/p>\n

For science, researchers managed to fit cameras inside a pair of Sony WF-1000XM3<\/a> wireless earbuds,<\/a> effectively imbuing everyone\u2019s favorite personal audio device with computer vision. Like smart glasses, these modified earbuds can survey your surroundings and answer questions using a large language model. If that sounds familiar, that\u2019s because Apple is apparently already sniffing around the same idea.<\/p>\n

According to a recent report from Bloomberg\u2019s Mark Gurman<\/a>, AirPods with cameras are actually nearing fruition and are allegedly in the \u201clate stages of development.\u201d Just like researchers from the University of Washington at Seattle who are responsible for the Frankensteined Sony device, Apple wants its modified earbuds used not for photography but for AI\u2014things like turn-by-turn navigation, for instance, or surfacing reminders based on your current environment. It\u2019s all very similar to products like the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses<\/a>, which use computer vision to parse your surroundings.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about the researchers\u2019 version, which they\u2019ve dubbed VueBuds, is how they\u2019re confronting some problems that shoving cameras into wireless earbuds inevitably creates. Battery life, for instance. Obviously, running cameras all the time is bad for battery life and privacy, so researchers opted for low-res cameras that only see in black and white, which makes them less power-hungry and less likely to capture images that could pose a security risk. With this setup, researchers say they were able to record a response time on par with that of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses, which isn\u2019t the best standard in the world, but isn\u2019t horrible. Here\u2019s a video of the VueBuds at work.<\/p>\n

The idea is an interesting one, but, to be honest, it runs into the same problems as computer vision on Ray-Ban smart glasses. As someone who\u2019s tested head-worn AI wearables at length<\/a>, I\u2019ll be the first to tell you that they\u2019re not always as useful as you\u2019d like them to be. Answers can often be wrong or unhelpful, wait times can be longer than you\u2019d like, and all the processing is done in the cloud, so if you don\u2019t have a proper internet connection\u2026 well, you\u2019re out of luck.<\/p>\n

There are some more technical problems I foresee with approaches like the VueBuds, too, one being the use of low-resolution, black-and-white video. Sure, it\u2019s good for battery life and, theoretically, better for privacy, but can it really capture all the detail you need? What if you have a color-specific question or need to see the details of something nearby?<\/p>\n

Either way, it\u2019s an interesting exercise, and if recent reporting is anything to go by, we might see a much more refined version of the VueBuds in the near future from a several-trillion-dollar company that has quite a few resources at its disposal. I, for one, am interested to see if all that cash can make wireless earbuds with cameras really work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re excited about the idea of Apple shoving cameras into AirPods, I\u2019ve got good news: you now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,943,74,5940,158198],"class_list":["post-651905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-audio","tag-technology","tag-wearables","tag-wireless-earbuds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}