I tested the new airpods that translate languages ​​in real time – and I was impressed

This week I found an old friend, and he told me what he had done during the summer. He and his girlfriend visited the family in Arizona. The niece took him to watch “Lilo and Stitch”. He was working hard on a new startup. He said all this in Spanish, a language I never learned, but I understood every word.

I understood it because I was using Apple’s new headphones that arrived in US stores on Friday-there is no launch forecast in Brazil yet. The Airpods Pro 3, which cost $ 250 (and will cost $ 2,699 in Brazil), use artificial intelligence to make real -time translations, their most significant resource. (The headphones, which have a little better noise cancellation, are not much different from the previous version.) While my friend was talking, the Virtual Assistant of Apple, Siri, acted as an interpreter, speaking with a robotic voice that immediately converted Spanish words to English in my ears.

Then I reviewed the transcription of the conversation produced on my iPhone to confirm the accuracy of the translation. With the exception of some errors where the Siri confused pronouns (referring to my friend’s girlfriend as “he” instead of “her”), the translation was solid.

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I was impressed. This was the strongest example I saw from practical and fluid working technology that can benefit many people. Children of immigrants who prefer to speak their native language may be easier to communicate. Travelers in foreign countries can better understand taxi drivers, hotel employees and airlines.

I would also help me in everyday life to understand a contractor or pest control employee who does not speak English and is trying to explain what he found under my house.

And frankly, I was surprised. Apple’s raid in the Generative AI, the technology that drives chatbots such as OpenAi’s chatgpt and Google Gemini has been turbulent to say the minimum. The company never completely launched some IPHONE 16 AI features last year because technology didn’t work well. And Apple AI tools available for photo editing and summary of articles have been disappointing compared to similar Google tools.

The robust translation technology in Airpods is a sign that Apple is still in the AI ​​race, despite the initial stumbling blocks. Digital language translators are not new, but the performance of the appeal by Apple in Airpods, a product that fits perfectly in the ears, should make a deep difference in the frequency with which people use this technology.

For over a decade, consumers have dealt with language translation applications on their phones that were hard to use, such as Google Translator and Microsoft Translator. They demanded that the user hold the microphone from the phone near a person speaking a foreign language and wait for the translation to appear on the screen or to be reproduced by the small speakers of the phone. Translations were often inaccurate.

In contrast, Airpod users only need to gesture to activate the digital interpreter. About a second after someone speaks, the translation is reproduced in the user’s favorite language by headphones.

Here is what you need to know about how to use the translator, how technology works and why it is probably better than previous translation applications.

Starting

Configuring the Airpods Pro was simple. I opened the case near my iPhone and touched a button to pair the headphones. To use the translation software, I had to update for the latest operating system, iOS 26, and activate Apple’s Apple Intelligence, Apple AI software.

Then I opened Apple’s new translate app and downloaded the languages ​​I wanted to translate. Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and English are available now, and more will come soon. I selected the language that the other person spoke (in this case, Spanish) and the language where I wanted to hear.

There are some shortcuts to activate the interpreter, but the simplest way is to hold the two airpod rods for a few seconds, which reproduces a sound. From there, the two people can start talking, and a transcription appears in the translate app while a voice reads the words translated aloud.

Owners of the AirPods Pro 2 of 2022 and last year’s Airpods 4 with noise cancellation can also get translation technology through a software update. A recent iPhone, such as iPhone 15 Pro or a 16 -series device, is also required to use Apple Intelligence to make translations.

For a fluid conversation translated into both directions, it is better that both people are using Airpods. Given how popular are Apple’s headphones, with hundreds of millions sold in the world, it seems quite likely.

However, there are times when this technology will be useful even with only one person using airpods. Many immigrants with whom I interact, including my nanny and mother-in-law, feel comfortable speaking only in their native language, but they can understand my answers in English, so I can understand them would also make a big difference.

Why translations are improving

Airpods dependence on large language models, the technology that uses complex statistics to guess which words belong together, should make translations more accurate than previous technologies, said Dimitra Vergyri, SRI’s director of speech technology, the research lab behind Siri’s initial version before being acquired by Apple.

Some words have different meanings depending on the context, and the great language models are able to analyze the entire scope of a conversation to correctly interpret what people are saying. Older translation technologies made fragmented translations, one sentence at a time, which could result in great mistakes for lack of context, said Vergyri.

Still, AI technology in Airpods can have blind spots that can lead to embarrassing social situations, he added. Words alone do not take into account other types of context, such as emotions and cultural nuances. In Morocco, for example, it can be unquestionable to get into a conversation without proper greeting, which usually involves asking about the family’s and the health of the person.

“Gap still exists for real communication,” said Vergyri. It added, however, that translation technology will become increasingly important as corporate workers become more global and need to communicate between cultures.

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