Apple wants to see the world from your wrist with upcoming Apple Watches

Visual intelligence could be heading to Apple's smartwatch line up as the company is exploring its implementation into the wearable devices with the additional of cameras.

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In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman explained that Apple is exploring the idea of adding cameras to its smartwatches, which would be paired with visual intelligence features, illustrating Apple's overall intention to integrate AI into its catalog of devices. Gurman explains the main idea of Apple Watches gaining cameras and visual intelligence would be to enable users to query their watch about the surroundings of the user.

The smartwatch feature would be similar to the new Visual Intelligence feature on iPhones, where users can long press the camera button and be presented with a new interface that lets them choose if they want to take a picture of something and have it analyzed by Google Search or ChatGPT. This feature isn't very well known or used due to it currently being locked to the iPhone 16 series, but it's expected to be adopted further when Apple releases iOS 18.4 next month, and it becomes available on the iPhone 15 Pro.

Gurman adds that Apple is planning on moving away from third-party AI models such as ChatGPT for its own in-house models while also rolling out visual intelligence features to other products in its line-up, such as the new AirPods that come equipped with cameras. Notably, the Bloomberg reporter says these new camera-equipped devices are still likely a few generations away, but it's the direction Apple is moving in with its upcoming products.