I suspect there’s nowhere enough money for apple or Samsung to enter the medical devices field for real. I would think the headphones have a Bluetooth receiver, a d/a converter and a speaker. They rely on the associated device to handle “adjustments”. Might be noise reduceing, but that only adds a mic and a phase inverter. Much simpler device. Getting medical approval takes time and $$… Easier to put fine print that the things does not treat or cure anything.
Looking over their marketing materials, the Airpods seem to have much more power than that onboard. They use their own custom silicon chip onboard and it seems to be pretty capable. I wonder if (doubt?) medical device manufacturers are designing custom processors for their hearing aids.
"...the new AirPods feature Adaptive EQ that tunes sound in real time based on how AirPods fit in the user’s ear. An inward-facing microphone monitors for sound, and then Adaptive EQ, powered by computational audio, tunes the low and mid frequencies to account for what may be lost due to variances in fit. "
"To help with sound clarity, beamforming microphones block out ambient noise and focus on the user’s voice, while users can also enjoy a hands-free experience by simply saying 'Hey Siri' for requests."
One of the issues is that Apple can take their time processing the sound, but hearing aids have a very small window of time (< 15ms, if I remember correctly) before there is a noticeable lag between sight and sound.
