Just this past week, I had a remarkable experience with an old friend. He shared stories about his summer adventures, including a trip to Arizona with his girlfriend, a fun movie outing with his niece, and his demanding new startup role. The incredible part? He recounted all of this in fluent Spanish, a language I’ve never learned, yet I understood every single word.
My secret was Apple’s brand-new AirPods Pro 3, launching this Friday. These $250 earbuds boast real-time artificial intelligence translation as their standout feature. (Beyond this, they offer only marginally improved noise cancellation compared to their predecessors.) As my friend spoke, Apple’s intelligent assistant, Siri, seamlessly translated his Spanish into English, delivering it directly into my ears in a clear, albeit somewhat robotic, voice.
To verify the accuracy, I later checked a transcript generated on my iPhone. Apart from a few minor pronoun errors (Siri occasionally referred to my friend’s girlfriend as ‘he’), the translation was remarkably accurate.
I was genuinely impressed. This experience stands as the most compelling demonstration I’ve witnessed of AI technology delivering a truly seamless and practical benefit. This innovation holds immense potential, from helping children of immigrants communicate more easily with family who prefer their native language, to empowering travelers to effortlessly understand taxi drivers, hotel staff, and airline personnel in foreign countries.
Even in daily life, this technology could be a game-changer, allowing me to fully understand a contractor or a pest control technician who might not speak English, ensuring clarity when they explain issues around my home.
My surprise was amplified by Apple’s previous, somewhat uneven, ventures into generative AI – the very technology powering popular chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Last year, Apple even failed to launch certain promised AI features for the iPhone 16 due to performance issues. Moreover, their existing AI tools for tasks like photo editing and article summarization have often fallen short when compared to Google’s offerings.
This impressive translation capability in the new AirPods, however, signals Apple’s strong commitment to the AI arena, despite earlier setbacks. While digital language translators aren’t entirely new, Apple’s masterful integration of this feature into the discreet, in-ear AirPods is poised to fundamentally change how frequently and effectively people engage with translation technology.
For years, users have struggled with clunky phone-based translation apps like Google Translate and Microsoft Translator. These often required holding a phone awkwardly up to a speaker, then waiting for a translation to appear on screen or play through tiny speakers, often with questionable accuracy.
With AirPods, the experience is radically different. Users simply make a gesture to activate the digital interpreter, and within about a second of someone speaking, the translation is delivered directly into their ears in their chosen language.
So, how does this game-changing translator work, how do you use it, and what makes it superior to previous translation tools? Let’s dive in.
Getting Started: Your Guide to Instant Communication
Setting up the AirPods Pro was remarkably straightforward. I simply opened the case near my iPhone and tapped to pair. To unlock the translation feature, an update to the latest operating system, iOS 26, was required, along with activating Apple Intelligence, the company’s dedicated AI software.
Next, I launched Apple’s new Translate app, where I downloaded the languages needed for translation. Currently, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and English are supported, with more languages on the horizon. I then selected the speaker’s language (Spanish, in my test) and my preferred listening language.
Activating the interpreter is easy; the simplest method involves pressing and holding both AirPods stems for a few seconds until you hear a chime. From that point, both participants can converse freely. The Translate app simultaneously displays a live transcription, while the translated speech plays aloud in your ears.
Good news for existing Apple users: owners of the 2022 AirPods Pro 2 and last year’s noise-cancelling AirPods 4 can also gain access to this translation technology via a software update. However, a recent iPhone, specifically an iPhone 15 Pro or any model from the 16 series, is necessary to power the Apple Intelligence features that drive these sophisticated translations.
For truly seamless, two-way translated conversations, ideal scenarios involve both individuals wearing AirPods. Considering the immense global popularity of Apple’s earbuds, with hundreds of millions already in use, widespread adoption of this feature seems highly likely.
Even with just one person wearing AirPods, this technology offers significant benefits. Many individuals I encounter, such as my nanny and mother-in-law, prefer to speak in their native language but can comprehend English responses. This new capability would greatly enhance my ability to understand and communicate with them effectively.
The Science Behind Better Translations: Why AI Makes a Difference
According to Dimitra Vergyri, Director of Speech Technology at SRI (the lab that developed the original Siri before Apple’s acquisition), the AirPods’ advanced translation capabilities stem from their reliance on large language models. This technology leverages intricate statistical analysis to predict word relationships, leading to significantly more accurate translations than previous methods.
Many words have varied meanings based on context, and large language models excel at analyzing the entire conversation to achieve correct interpretations. Dr. Vergyri explained that older translation tools often performed piecemeal, sentence-by-sentence translations, which frequently led to major errors due to the lack of overall context.
Despite these advancements, Dr. Vergyri cautioned that AirPods’ AI technology might still have limitations, potentially leading to socially awkward moments. Pure word-for-word translation can’t capture non-verbal cues, emotions, or intricate cultural nuances. For instance, in a culture like Morocco, it’s considered impolite to immediately dive into a conversation without a respectful greeting that often includes inquiries about family and well-being.
“The gap still exists for real, nuanced communication,” Dr. Vergyri acknowledged. However, she emphasized that as the global workforce becomes increasingly interconnected, translation technology will play an ever more critical role in fostering cross-cultural communication.