Apple’s AirPods are arguably the most iconic headphones ever. The small, glossy, stylish buds are lauded for both their sound and design and are worn by hundreds of millions of people across the globe. 

But come next year, those hundreds of millions of AirPods owners might face a problem they never envisioned: being labeled as creeps or perverts—all for innocuously wearing one of the most instantly recognizable tech gadgets ever made.

That’s because Apple will reportedly release a new AirPods model in 2027 with built-in cameras. Doing so poses an existential threat to the brand reputation of Apple’s most successful product since the iPhone.

If there’s one thing that can be said about wearables with built-in cameras, it’s that the public has a deep mistrust of the people wearing them. This is because, historically, many camera-enabled wearables have done a poor job communicating to bystanders when the wearer is recording them. It doesn’t help that wearers can often disable or obscure the public-facing alerts manufacturers build into these devices that let others know they may be being recorded.

This uncertainty has caused many people, unjustly or not, to assume the person wearing the wearable is a creep or pervert, and indeed, entire terms have arisen to pejoratively describe such wearers. 

” When it came to Google Glass, the glasshole blowback got so bad that Google posted a reminder to Glass wearers not to be creepy.

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