OpenAI's First Devices: Speaker, Smartphone, and More

[JohnC1959]

I don't know yet that I want such a device but if I did it would need to be from some company that allowed me to change what AI service/models I would use. I don't want to be too tied to one when suddenly their competitor has a way better AI service.

 

[captrlp]

Zuckerberg is getting the popcorn ready…he will no longer be the king of privacy invasion!

 

[Harvey Zoltan]

Did they leave out a 0, I cannot see anything priced between $200 and $300 having Joni Ive's name attached to it.

 

[diewish2007]

Does Sam Altman have special privacy settings applied to his own ChatGPT account or will he be fine with his own employees watching videos of him being a weirdo in his own house?

 

[Patchwork]

Do we really think Open AI will be around long enough to launch these products? Last year they lost $38.53 billion on revenue of $13.07 billion. That’s just not sustainable. Throw in Apple’s lawsuit and investors starting sell off AI investments, they may find their source of new investment dries up.

 

[svish]

Would like to see the smartphone and smart glasses. Wonder how they will be priced and will be very interesting to hear all the rumors.

 

[chelsel]

I barely trust Alexa. This is a hell to the nah.

 

[Mansu944]

After the Luce he should be done.

 

[CEmajr]

I think at this point Apple can't be unseated at the top of the smartphone market. Plenty have tried but Apple still eats almost all of the profit in the industry. Meta had the right idea by going after a new category (smart glasses) rather than attempting to take on the iPhone. The other products could be interesting but I'm not expecting the smartphone to be competitive with the iPhone.

 

[Robert.Walter]

"the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen."

Self moving to make it seem alive?

Creepy like Daleks.

I will never pay a cent to an Altman, Musk, or Zuckerberg company or use a product directly offered by them.

 

[Robert.Walter]

After the Luce he should be done.

Al-u-minium would like a word.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Johnny Ive is too greedy. He needs to sit down somewhere. He had a great career. Now it’s time to retire and do something else. Secondly, I’m not interested in a phone or device from some AI data mining operation which will ultimately be used against me later.

 

[stoney05]

It’s it legal for a non-profit to have an IPO?

 

[Sami13496]

”He believes controlling both the operating system and the hardware is the only way OpenAI can deliver a comprehensive agent service.”

Does this mean that OpenAI’s potential smartphone will have an operating system developed by OpenAI itself?

 

[fullauto]

Poor form from Ive. You don’t design products for a company for most of your life and then go to another company and give them all the stuff the other didn’t use.

 

[csilverman]

For all the 'ain't no way I'm gonna let that in my home' negativity surrounding this, obviously Apple sees this as a big enough threat to launch lawsuits at OpenAI to try and block it - I'm kinda intrigued tbh and not gonna rule anything out just yet. After all, no one thought the iPad (aka massive iPhone) would fly but take a look at it now. Fanboys be a little open-minded here, this could be a game-changer!

I doubt anyone at Apple sees this as a serious threat. AI guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in, you know?

But being serious now—Apple isn't suing OpenAI because this is a legitimate threat. They're suing OpenAI because these guys not only stole their stuff, but were naive enough to be comically reckless and unsubtle about it. Apple is as litigious as Disney, who'd go after your mom if she drew Mickey Mouse in marker on her shirt and wore it to a church gathering. And as far as that goes, nobody dunking on this thing is doing so out of any blind loyalty to Apple. We're doing it because nobody trusts anybody in a leadership position at OpenAI and we can feel in our bones that whatever they're making is going to suck.

I'd say Apple's biggest worry here is that OpenAI won't be around long enough for Apple to collect their winnings. Who knows, maybe Apple can scoop them up after the resulting settlement/firesale.

 

[Blue Nova]

Actually, I welcome this new device or what other devices they came up with because for 2 1/2 years Apple has been promising advancement coming soon on Apple devices, but nothing happens so far I have a device called HomePod mini speaker and while I’m listening to music I can say who’s on the band and they tell me I have to go to my computer on my iPhone and ask from there so they can show it to me and they don’t even figure out how to deal with this so I welcome these new lashes coming from another group

 

[Analog Kid]

Did they leave out a 0, I cannot see anything priced between $200 and $300 having Joni Ive's name attached to it.

That $200-300 buys you the opportunity to pay for a subscription which buys you the opportunity to upload a live audio feed from your home.

 

[applefan8254]

Just please allow us to pair a Bluetooth / generic remote with it. I like to fall asleep with music and I hate calling out commands. I’d rather have volume and next track physical buttons right under my finger rather than waking myself up yelling commands lol.

 

[frenchcamp49er]

Already a flop. Ive is a lost cause without Steve.

 

[anshuvorty]

LOL - their entire roadmap....spoiled...wow...kinda sucks....TBH....I wanted the awe and spectacle of a brand new tech startup company trying to compete against the behemoths of the industry and challenge them at their own game...god damn it...spoiler and leak culture strikes again!!!

 

[piatigorsky]

Just go bankrupt. Please. The sooner the better.

 

[kwikdeth]

It will be interesting to see if OpenAI's phone is able to undercut the competition and drive adoption based on price, since they are likely to have the kind of leverage Apple had thanks to how much memory they are buying.

 

[bluecoast]

”He believes controlling both the operating system and the hardware is the only way OpenAI can deliver a comprehensive agent service.”

Does this mean that OpenAI’s potential smartphone will have an operating system developed by OpenAI itself?

Almost certainly it’ll be a branch of de-Googled android.

That personal AI will be experienced on something like the main character in ‘Her’ uses, is likely because the movie itself is a proof of concept for that UX.

(Although the smartphone is surely going to be the primary interface).

But as many others here have said, it’s hard to trust the frontier model makers.

And from the company whose experimental models can breach its sandbox, are we all really going to be ok with letting a camera enabled smart speaker with a microphone into our homes ?

 

[rosuna]

"Smart glasses, a smart lamp, and potentially earbuds are also reportedly in development"

Besides the creep factor that's part and parcel of anything OpenAI, I think the larger question is whether they have the technical chops to deliver on this in a way that meaningfully competes with anything from Apple or Samsung. I don't think they do.

Power-hungry devices in tiny, cramped form factors are *very* hard to pull off, and OpenAI is not a hardware company. Even with all the fancy Apple people they've poached, they still have no background in hardware design or manufacturing. There's a reason why every hardware product from AI companies so far has been a turd, and why every pair of smart glasses so far looks like it was designed by Buddy Holly. Hardware is hard, no matter how many trade secrets you stea—er, have absolutely no interest in.

They have hired Apple executives precisely to be able to put Ive's ideas on the market very quickly.

Steve Jobs pointed out that Apple had to innovate, even if that meant eroding sales of existing products. The iPhone is the heart of Apple's income, but AI has to make it evolve. The Apple Intelligence debacle indicates that they did not know how to see that this would be so, and how. OpenAI seems to have an idea: replace the visual interface of the operating systems with an always active AI assistant, using voice (or written) commands to which you can directly tell what you want. It would be the biggest revolution in the way of interacting with a computer from the Lisa interface in 1983, and it is unavoidable. I don't know if it will occur next year or within two, but if the AI becomes increasingly efficient and capable, it will take control of our actions on a computer for simple convenience. OpenAI sees it clearly and is ready to take risks, because they cannot compete with the iPhone by developing an AndroidOS or an iOS, and they need income in huge amounts. They need new ways to sell AI.

The threat of OpenAI is very real, and that explains Apple's aggressive demand.

The good news is that Apple is now correctly oriented towards the same goal, although its pace seems slower, logically, because they are in less of a hurry. This threat from OpenAI may make them accelerate.