Apple has been rumoured to be working on a TV set for many years.

It's such an old story at this point, you can't help but roll your eyes at the thought of another analyst claiming Apple is once again readying a standalone display. But analyst talk is one thing; leaked images of the actual device are something else. On 16 August, blurry images appeared online purporting to show what looks like an Apple-made standalone display in some sort of testing room.

The images, first posted on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, were spotted by leaker Benjamin Geskin, and a quick Google translation of the original Weibo post reveals phrases like "Apple OLED TV spy photos" and "about 60 inches", as well as talk about a camera being depicted. From what we can tell in the images, the TV sports a narrow, metal frame, but we can't see any camera sensors.

Two of the leaked photos seem to be from a closed-circuit TV screen that's displaying front and rear camera views of the Apple TV set as it rests on a rotating desk, with connecting cables going down to the floor. A third image appears to be taken from a doorway, and a fourth image shows the same Apple TV set, but this time, it's connected to orange cables and might be in a different testing room.

Are these sneaky photos of Apple testing a device that may soon launch for consumers? Who knows. We do know that rumours about such a device go back to at least 2011, though a Wall Street Journal report from two years ago claimed that Apple had abandoned its TV set plans in 2014. We also know that Apple might be working on a fifth-generation Apple TV with support for 4K video.

We have many questions, and we're a little skeptical, to say the least.