‘iPanopticon’: 1,000 spies in your pocket

While we wait for the iPhone 17e, new iPads and the exciting low-cost Macbooks on March 4, spare a thought for another Apple plan: the company is preparing  to bet that people are ready for AI to infest itself across every part of daily life, with a trio of products built around its forthcoming smarter Siri assistant. 

We’re told this vision sees cameras, microphones, and speakers everywhere, all gathering data “privately” (until some government demands a back door to the data, I suppose) to give these products a sense of contextual awareness.

Cameras, cameras everywhere

The three alleged products include AirPods with cameras, an AI pendant or pin, and smart glasses to compete with Meta’s smart Ray-Band. 

• The glasses will apparently carry speakers, microphones, and cameras, with one camera lens capturing images and video and the other providing the device with environmental context. Bloomberg claims a battery pack will be built in, and the design will comprise high-end materials. Apple may also launch these glasses in additional styles over time. None of the speculation on glasses is particularly new given we’ve been speculating Apple may have a plan of this kind since well before the Vision Pro systems were first announced. 
• The pendant (also described as a pin) will basically have an always on camera that connects to the iPhone, and microphones for Siri which means the iPhone will have situational awareness. It may also offer a built-in speaker so you can use it to take and make calls, and (presumably) listen to Siri’s responses. Logically, it should also be possible to use the pin along with a pair of AirPods.

What’s this movie?

I must be honest, the notion that everywhere I go I’ll be captured on video by a stranger using a wearable from Apple, or (horror) anyone else doesn’t truly appeal to me and I must hope the company has developed some smart way to remove strangers, particularly kids, from any saved video, images, or recording in the absence of any express consent. Apple being Apple, I imagine the company has already spent a little time considering how to accomplish that.

All the same, while these panopticon-supporting technologies may be useful when you happen to find yourself trying to find your way around a new part of town after the AI-driven employment collapse and the descent into mass poverty and criminal desperation that will inevitably follow, I kind of think at this point of the 21st Century that a lot of us are beginning to truly understand that convenience at the cost of privacy has eroded much of our society.

With that in mind I do hope Apple gets this right this time, as I don’t expect its competitors will bother to try.

It also feels somewhat ironic that the more daily life images are captured, the less useful those images seem to become. Perhaps I’m becoming too cynical, or perhaps it is because the abundance we were promised doesn’t yet seem to have appeared.

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