Apple, Google and Meta are trying to perfect a science-fiction gadget: The universal translator
Apple AirPods Pro 3 models are displayed during Apple’s “Awe-Dropping” event at the Steve Jobs Theater on the Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2025.
Nic Coury | AFP | Getty Images
For decades, shows like “Star Trek” and novels like “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” have showcased fictional universal translators, capable of seamlessly converting any language into English and vice versa.
Now, those gadgets once limited to works of science fiction are inching close to reality.
During its iPhone unveiling event on Tuesday, Apple included a video of many travelers’ dream scenario. It showed an English-speaking tourist buying flowers in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country. The florist addressed the tourist in Spanish, but what the tourist heard was in clear, coherent English.
“Today all the red carnations are 50% off,” the tourist heard in English in her headphones, at essentially the same time that the clerk was speaking.
The video was marketing material for Apple’s latest AirPods Pro 3, but the feature is one of many of its kind coming from tech companies that also include Google parent Alphabet and Meta, which makes Facebook and Instagram.
Apple introduces live translation to airpods.
Courtesy: Apple
Technological advancements spurred by the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 have ushered in an era of generative artificial intelligence. Almost three years later, those advancements are resulting in real-time language translators.
For Apple, Live Translation is a key selling point for the AirPods Pro 3, which the company unveiled on Tuesday. The new $250 earbuds go on sale next week, and with Live Translation, users will be able to immediately hear French, German, Portuguese and Spanish translated to English. Live Translation will also arrive as an update to AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 on Monday.
And when two people are speaking to each other wearing AirPods, the conversation can be translated both ways simultaneously inside each user’s headphones. In Apple’s video demo, it looked like two people talking to each other in different languages.
Analysts are excited that the feature could mark a step forward for Apple’s AI strategy. The translation feature needs to be paired with a new-enough iPhone to run Apple Intelligence, Apple’s AI software suite.
“If we can actually use the AirPods for live translations, that’s a feature that would actually get people to upgrade,” DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria told CNBC on Wednesday.
Translation is emerging as a key battleground in the technology industry as AI gets good enough to translate languages as quickly as people speak.
But Apple is not alone.
Host Jimmy Fallon holds Pixel 10 Pro Fold mobile phone during the ‘Made by Google’ event, organised to introduce the latest additions to Google’s Pixel portfolio of devices, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., August 20, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
A crowded market
In the past year, Google and Meta have also released hardware products featuring real-time translation capabilities.
Google’s Pixel 10 phone has a capability that can translate what a speaker is saying to the listener’s language during phone calls. That feature, called Voice Translate is designed to also preserve the speaker’s voice inflections. Voice Translate will start showing up on people’s phones through a software update on Monday.
In Google’s live demo in August, Voice Translate was able to translate a sentence from entertainer Jimmy Fallon into Spanish, and it actually sounded like the comedian. Apple’s feature does not try to imitate the user’s voice.
Meanwhile, Meta in May announced that its Ray-Ban Meta glasses would be able to translate what a person is saying in another language using the device’s speakers, and the other party in the conversations would be able to see translated responses transcribed on the user’s phone.
Meta will hold its own product keynote on Wednesday, where the company is expected to announce the next generation of its smart glasses, which will feature a small display in one of the lenses, CNBC reported in August. It’s unclear if Meta will announce more translation features.
Meta employee Sara Nicholson poses with the Ray-Ban sunglasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 24, 2024.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
And OpenAI in June showcased an intelligent voice assistant mode for ChatGPT that has fluid translation built-in as one of many features. ChatGPT is integrated with Apple’s Siri, but not in voice mode. OpenAI is planning to release new hardware products with Apple’s former design guru Jony Ive in the coming years.
The rise of live translation could also reshape entire industries. Translators and interpreters are the number one type of job threatened by AI, and 98% of translators’ work activities overlap with what AI can do, a Microsoft Research study published in August found.
Purpose built translators
In the past several years, a number of purpose-built translation gadgets have entered the market, taking advantage of global high-speed cellular service and improving online translation services to produce puck-like devices or headphones with translation built-in for a couple hundred dollars.
“What I love about what Apple is doing is it really just illuminates the fact that how pressing of an issue this is,” said Joe Miller, U.S. general manager of Japan-based Pocketalk, which makes a $299 translation device that goes between two people conversing in different languages and translates their conversation in audio and text.
Given Apple’s massive scale and the fact that the Apple shipped about 18 million sets of wireless headphones in the first quarter alone, according to Canalys, the company’s entry into the market will expose a wider subset of customers to improvements translation tech has made in recent years.
Despite Apple’s entry into the market, makers of purpose-built devices say their focus on accuracy and knowledge of linguistics will provide better translations than what’s available for free with a new phone.
“We actually hired linguists,” said Aleksander Alski, head of U.S. and Canada for Poland-based Vasco Electronics, which is releasing translation headphones that can imitate the user’s voice, like Google’s feature. “We combined the AI with with human input, and thanks to that, we were able to secure much higher accuracy throughout all the languages we offer.”
There’s also home-field advantage. Vasco Electronics’ largest market is Europe, and Apple’s Live Translation isn’t available for EU users, Apple said on its website.
Some of the products being introduced by tech companies are less than universal, and are limited to a small number of languages for now. Apple’s feature is only available in 5 languages, versus Pocketalk’s 95.
Pocketalk’s Miller believes that the potential of the technology goes far beyond a tourist ordering a glass of wine in France. He says that it’s most powerful when its used in workplaces like schools and hospitals, which require privacy and security features that go beyond what Apple and Google provide.
“This isn’t about luxury tourism and travel,” Miller said. “This is about the intersection of language and friction, when a discussion needs to be had.”
Apple didn’t respond to a request for comment.
WATCH: If the AirPods live translation features work, it’s a breakthrough in AI, says DA Davidson’s Luria
Marc Benioff is keeping an eye on Palantir.
The co-founder and CEO of sales and customer service management software company Salesforce is well aware that investors are betting big on Palantir, which offers data management software to businesses and government agencies.
“Oh my gosh. I am so inspired by that company,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan in a Tuesday interview at Goldman Sachs‘ Communacopia+Technology conference in San Francisco. “I mean, not just because they have 100 times, you know, multiple on their revenue, which I would love to have that too. Maybe it’ll have 1000 times on their revenue soon.”
Salesforce, a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, remains 10 times larger than Palantir by revenue, with over $10 billion in revenue during the latest quarter. But Palantir is growing 48%, compared with 10% for Salesforce.
Benioff added that Palantir’s prices are “the most expensive enterprise software I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe I’m not charging enough,” he said.
It wasn’t Benioff’s first time talking about Palantir. Last week, Benioff referenced Palantir’s “extraordinary” prices in an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, saying Salesforce offers a “very competitive product at a much lower cost.”
The next day, TBPN podcast hosts John Coogan and Jordi Hays asked for a response from Alex Karp, Palantir’s co-founder and CEO.
“We are very focused on value creation, and we ask to be modestly compensated for that value,” Karp said.
The companies sometimes compete for government deals, and Benioff touted a recent win over Palantir for a U.S. Army contract.
Palantir started in 2003, four years after Salesforce. But while Salesforce went public in 2004, Palantir arrived on the New York Stock Exchange in 2020.
Palantir’s market capitalization stands at $406 billion, while Salesforce is worth $231 billion. And as one of the most frequently traded stocks on Robinhood, Palantir is popular with retail investors.
Salesforce shares are down 27% this year, the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Salesforce and Palantir year to date stock chart.
Gemini Co-founders Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss attend the company’s IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York City, U.S., Sept. 12, 2025.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters
Shares of Gemini Space Station soared more than 40% on Thursday after the exchange operator raised $425 million in an initial public offering.
The stock opened at $37.01 on the Nasdaq after its IPO priced at $28. At one point, shares traded as high as $40.71.
The New York-based company priced its IPO late Thursday above this week’s expected range of $24 to $26, and an initial range of between $17 and $19. That valued the company at some $3.3 billion before trading began.
Gemini, which primarily operates as a cryptocurrency exchange, was founded by the Winklevoss brothers in 2014 and held more than $21 billion of assets on its platform as of the end of July. Per its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gemini posted a net loss of $159 million in 2024, and in the first half of this year, it lost $283 million.
The company also offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, credit cards with a crypto-back rewards program and a custody service for institutions.
The Winklevoss brothers were among the earliest bitcoin investors and first bitcoin billionaires. They have long held that bitcoin is a superior store of value than gold. On Friday morning, they told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” they see its price reaching $1 million a decade from now.
In 2013, they were the first to apply to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, more than 10 years before the first bitcoin ETFs would eventually be approved. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of the application, which cited risk of fraud and market manipulation, set the stage for the bitcoin ETF debate in the years to come.
Even in the early days, when bitcoin was notorious for its extreme volatility and anti-establishment roots and shunned by Wall Street, the Winklevoss brothers were outspoken about the need for smart regulation that would establish rules for the crypto-led financial revolution.
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