(Credit: PCMag/Michael Kan)
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Former Apple designer Jony Ive isn’t lifting the curtain on his OpenAI project just yet, but he hopes it’ll ease the mental and emotional toll of our tech-obsessed lives.
“I don’t think we have an easy relationship with our technology at the moment,” Ive told an audience at OpenAI’s developer conference on Monday.
“And rather than see AI as an extension of those challenges, I see it as a chance to use this most remarkable capability to full-on address a lot of the overwhelm and despair that people feel right now,” he added. “And some of that is connected to the tools that they are using.”
In May, OpenAI acquired Ive's "io" startup, which he created last year to develop AI hardware. Officially, the company has only said the project involves a “family of devices," but a recent report from The Financial Times says one of the products will be a handheld device without a screen, capable of taking audio and visual data through a microphone and camera.
(Credit: PCMag/Michael Kan)The big question is how the mysterious project will stand out from today’s smartphones, smart speakers, and other (failed) attempts to feature AI. During his talk, Ive signaled that OpenAI’s technology can take computing in a new direction without creating a mental toll.
“When I say we have an uncomfortable relationship with our technology, I mean that’s the most obscene understatement,” he said. Although Ive didn’t specifically spell out his concerns, his comments might allude to the toxicity of social media and addictiveness of today’s devices.
Ive hinted that his device will focus on trying to make consumers happy, rather than merely elevating user productivity. “I am a little crushed by how all serious we all take ourselves,” he said.
“I mean, this is serious stuff. Truly, the ramifications of not caring [about technology’s impact], not being careful, are truly horrendous," he added. “But in terms of the devices that we design, in terms of the interfaces that we design, if we can’t smile, honestly, if it’s just another deeply serious, exclusive thing, I think that would do us all a huge disservice."
Ive also noted that one of his goals is to create a device “that should just work. It should seem inevitable; it should seem obvious.” His hope is that during this new wave of AI advancement, the next-generation tools “will make us happy, and fulfilled and more peaceful, and less anxious and less disconnected.”
“Every bone in my body believes this: We have a chance to not just sort of redress them, but absolutely change the situation that we find ourselves in. That we don’t accept that this has to be the norm,” he said.
Disclosure: Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April 2025, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.