Apple Suspends AirTag-Size Wearable with Camera and AI

Apple has temporarily suspended development of a camera-equipped, AI-powered wearable roughly the size of an AirTag, Bloomberg reports. The project was intended to feed ambient visual data to Siri so the assistant could apply Visual Intelligence to answer users' questions about their surroundings, location and nearby objects.

According to Bloomberg, engineers had been working on a very thin, disc-shaped prototype with dimensions close to an AirTag. Its body combined aluminum and glass and included a physical button on the side to control primary functions. A small camera on the device was intended to capture real-time images of the environment and supply those frames to image-processing models (machine-learning systems that interpret pictures).

Bloomberg says the device was part of a broader push within Apple, over recent months, to integrate artificial intelligence more tightly with everyday hardware. Earlier reports had suggested the wearable could reach the market by 2027. With the company's decision to pause engineering work and reassess the project, a commercial release within that timeframe now appears unlikely.

The pause does not mean Apple has abandoned next-generation hardware. Work continues on several other wearables, including a screenless health band designed for continuous monitoring of vital signs, AI glasses and iterations of AirPods that would include an image sensor and on-device visual analysis capabilities.