Apple’s new “Visual Intelligence” feature was one of the most impressive on display at Monday’s iPhone 16 event. The tool lets users scan the world around them through the iPhone camera to identify a dog breed, copy event details from a poster, or search for virtually anything around them.
It's a feature that seems practical and pairs perfectly with the iPhone's new camera button, but it could also lay the groundwork for larger products in the future — it's exactly the kind of element Apple will need for future technologies like augmented reality glasses.
It’s not hard to imagine how Visual Intelligence could help you on a device that sees everything you see. Take the idea of learning more about a restaurant, as Apple showed with Visual Intelligence on an iPhone: Instead of pulling your phone out of your pocket to look up information about a new place, with a pair of glasses, you could simply look at the restaurant, ask a question, and the glasses would tell you more.
Meta has already shown that computer glasses can be good
Meta has already shown that computer glasses with an ai assistant can be a good and useful tool for identifying things. It's not a huge leap to imagine Apple doing something similar with a very high level of fit and finish for theoretical glasses. Apple would almost certainly also make the glasses connect to all your apps and the personal context of your iPhone, making Visual Intelligence even more useful.
Of course, Apple already has a headset packed with cameras: the Vision Pro. But most people don't wear their headsets outside the house, and they probably already know what they have at home. Apple has long been rumored to want to develop a pair of true augmented reality glasses, and it seems that this is the ultimate destination for this kind of technology.
The problem is that Apple-made AR glasses could be a long way off. BloombergMark Gurman reported In June that a 2027 release date has been “mentioned” for its in-development glasses, but noted that “no one I've spoken to within Apple believes the glasses will be ready in a few years.”
But when those glasses arrive, they'll need software, and here's how Apple is working out the basics. Visual Intelligence could be Apple's first step toward a revolutionary application for computer glasses, and by starting now, Apple will potentially have years to perfect the feature before it appears in glasses.
It wouldn't be a surprise if Apple took that approach. The company dabbled in augmented reality technologies on the iPhone for years before releasing the Vision Pro. Yes, you could argue that the Vision Pro is much more of a VR headset than an AR device, but it's clearly a first step toward something that could become AR glasses. As Apple improves that hardware, it can also work on software features like Visual Intelligence on the iPhone and, when the time is right, cram all the best ideas into a glasses-like product..
