The Apple Watch may get cameras and Apple Intelligence

Apple is working on adding cameras to the Apple Watch in order to enable AI features like Visual Intelligence within the next two years, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman in today’s Power On Newsletter.

The cameras will be “inside the display” for the standard Series Watch, while the Apple Watch Ultra would feature it on the side, next to the digital crown and button, according to Gurman. With them, the Apple Watch would be able to “see the outside world and use AI to deliver relevant information,” which he says is also the plan for camera-equipped AirPods Apple is rumored to be working on.

The Visual Intelligence features that these devices would use debuted on the iPhone 16, where it works with the phone’s camera to do things like add details from an event flyer to your calendar, or look up information about a restaurant. It’s underpinned by AI models from other companies, but Gurman writes that Apple hopes to power the feature with its own in-house models by 2027, when he says the company plans to release these new Apple Watches and AirPods.

Visual Intelligence and other AI features coming to Apple’s wearables would depend a lot the leadership of Mike Rockwell, who Gurman reported last week is now in charge getting the delayed Siri LLM upgrade on track. Rockwell was previously in charge of the Vision Pro and reportedly will continue to work on visionOS. That software is expected to power another Apple wearable that’s likely to have a big AI component, but that’s likely still several years away: AR glasses in the vein of the Orion concept that Meta showed off last year.