Rumored Home Security Camera From Apple Won’t Actually Record Video

Apple, a company known for making privacy a priority, is reportedly working on a home security camera that doesn’t record video or photos.

The report comes from trusted Apple insider Mark Gurman who was speaking on his brand new podcast Power On, an extension of his newsletter published on Bloomberg. Gurman says that the camera will sit within a “new Apple smart home ecosystem.”

“They’re also building home security products, both first-party and third-party home security products. And the biggest thing is a program called J450. And this is an offshoot and a companion product to the J490 smart home display. And these are little cameras that you can put around your house. They have a very low frame rate. It looks like a cylinder. It looks like a metal giant, you know, chapstick,” Gurman says per The Verge.

“And what does that mean? No video recording. So it’s a sensor that cannot actually pull in real video footage. It’s analyzing your environment in your home and around your home simply using AI.”

Gurman says that this strange new camera technology is “very similar” to the one Apple is reportedly developing for its camera-equipped AirPods.

The home camera that Gurman describes will have facial recognition technology and will be able to tell the user things like “Mark has just walked into the room,” et cetera. But it will not be able to pull a video recording of that person walking into a room. Gurman says this system is in response to a society that is increasingly monitored by systems like Flock cameras.

“They have pitched this as an alternative to that very disturbing idea of mass surveillance because you’re not getting anything but text descriptions,” Gurman says. “There’s nothing you can do with it, there’s no video recording. This is going to be the first home video security camera that doesn’t give you any footage. I think that’s a pretty compelling pitch.”

Gurman points out that there are instances where users will want footage from a home security camera, like a burglary.

“What are you supposed to do with the [text] description? Give it to the police? They’re not going to be able to do anything with the description; they want the actual tape. So it will be interesting to see how they market this thing,” he adds.

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.