This week, I saw an old friend, and he caught me up on what he’d been up to over the summer. He and his girlfriend had visited family in Arizona, US. His niece dragged him to a screening of Lilo and Stitch. He was working hard at a new startup. He said all of this in Spanish, a language I have never learned but I followed every word.

I understood him because I was wearing the new Apple earbuds. The AirPods Pro 3 use artificial intelligence to do real-time translations, their most significant new feature. (The earphones, which have slightly better noise cancellation, are otherwise not that different from the last iteration.) As my friend spoke, Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, acted as an interpreter, speaking in a robotic voice that immediately converted the Spanish words into English in my ears.

Later, I reviewed a transcript of the conversation produced on my iPhone to confirm the accuracy of the translation. With the exception of a few mistakes where Siri mixed up pronouns (referring to my friend’s girlfriend as a “he” instead of a “she”), it was solid.

I was impressed. This was the strongest example I had seen of AI technology working in a seamless, practical way that could be beneficial for lots of people. And frankly, I was also surprised. Apple’s foray into generative AI — the technology driving chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini — has been rocky, to say the least. The company never finished releasing some of the AI features it promised for last year’s iPhone 16 because the technology didn’t work well. And Apple’s AI tools that are available for photo editing and summarising articles have been disappointing compared with similar tools from Google.

The robust translation technology in the AirPods is a sign that Apple is still in the AI race. Digital language translators are not new, but Apple’s execution of the feature with the AirPods should make a profound difference in how often people use the technology.

For more than a decade, consumers have fumbled with language translation apps like Google Translate and Microsoft Translator. They required users to hold their phone’s microphone up to a person speaking a foreign language and wait for a translation to be shown on a screen or played through the speakers. The translations were often inaccurate.

In contrast, AirPods users need only to make a gesture to activate the digital interpreter. About a second after someone speaks, the translation is played in the wearer’s preferred language.

Here’s what you need to know about how to use the translator, how the technology works and why it is likely to be better than past translation apps.

Getting started

Setting up the AirPods Pro was simple. I opened the case next to my iPhone and tapped a button to pair the earphones. To use the translation software, I had to update to the latest operating system, iOS 26, and activate Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI software.

Then I had to open Apple’s new Translate app and download the languages I wanted to translate. Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and English are available right now. I selected the language the other person was speaking (in this case, Spanish) and the language I wanted to hear it in.

There are a few shortcuts to activate the interpreter, but the simplest way is to hold down on both stems of the AirPods for a few seconds, which will play a sound. From there, both people can start speaking, and a transcription shows up in the Translate app while a voice reads the translated words out loud.

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

For a fluid conversation to be translated in both directions, it is best if both people are wearing AirPods. Yet there are times when this tech will be useful even with only one person wearing AirPods. Plenty of immigrants I interact with, including my nanny and mother-in-law, are comfortable speaking only in their native tongue, but can understand my responses in English, so my being able to understand them, too, would go a long way.

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