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Apple's former chief design officer is working with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on AI hardware.
Jony Ive confirmed the partnership in an interview with The New York Times, which describes the device as an AI "computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone." He was otherwise light on details, including a timeline for release.
Rumors of the project date back to September 2023, when The Financial Times first reported on efforts to raise $1 billion for the device. It could be OpenAI's splashiest consumer product since ChatGPT, though two similar-sounding projects have launched and crashed.
The $699 Humane AI Pin, also from two former Apple execs, debuted in February with the promise of freeing us from our iPhones. By May, lackluster reviews had the company looking to sell.
The $199 Rabbit R1 launched in May as well, also with the promise of replacing cell phones for certain functions. It, too, under-performed for early testers, earning a two-star review from PCMag for its limited features, inaccuracies, and non-intuitive design.
Ive, 57, worked at Apple for 27 years and is credited for the brand's minimalist aesthetic. Since leaving Apple, he's purchased $90 million worth of real estate on a city block in San Francisco, part of which will serve as the headquarters for the company overseeing the AI device, the Times reports. Ive's LoveFrom firm will also take the lead on design.
Ive has hired 10 employees for the project, including former Apple co-workers Tang Tan, who oversaw iPhone product development, and Evans Hankey, who succeeded Ive as head of design at Apple before leaving in 2022.
Ive met Altman through Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, an early client of Ive's design firm LoveFrom, the Times says. Chesky arranged a dinner between them at a Michelin-starred restaurant in San Francisco, where they talked of creating a device that could "could do more for users than traditional software since it could summarize and prioritize messages, identify and name objects like plants and eventually field complex requests like booking travel."
Hopefully, it'll be cheaper than the $60,000 record player LoveFrom designed for British audio company Linn last year.