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OpenAI is buying Jony Ive's startup "IO" Products in a $6.5 billion deal and will bring the chief designer of early iPhones on board as creative head to develop devices tailored for the generative artificial intelligence era.
LoveFrom, the design firm founded by Ive after leaving Apple, has been working with OpenAI for two years on generative AI devices - an area where startups have stumbled due to high computing demands, including flops such as Humane's AI Pin.
With Ive leading design, OpenAI aims to pair the technology behind its popular ChatGPT chatbot with the product design expertise that made devices such as the iPhone bestsellers.
British-born Ive was an Apple employee from 1992 to 2019, during which time he oversaw the development of the brand's now legendary products, from the iMac and AirPods to the iPod, iPhone and Apple Watch. Working closely with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, his designs revitalized Apple, making it the company with the world's third-largest market capitalization and a global standard for product design.
Altman said a transformational new technology such as AI deserves a revolutionary new way to interact with it.
Comparing AI to "magic intelligence," Altman said the technology behind ChatGPT "deserves something much better" than having to type questions into a laptop.
Ive began collaborating with Altman two years ago and it "became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," the pair said in a joint post.
OpenAI putting its hot chatbot into a new kind of gadget could be a threat to Apple, which has struggled with its AI strategy, particularly when it comes to making its Siri digital assistant smarter.
Apple shares were down nearly three percent in after-market trades on Wednesday. Almost a year after announcing the integration of a host of generative AI functionalities into its new iPhone 16, Apple has been slow to implement them. The Cupertino, California-based group has also postponed the release of an updated version of its Siri voice assistant until next year, at best.
OpenAI has become one of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, propelled to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, its generative AI chatbot.
