Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s secret device won’t be ‘your weird AI girlfriend’

The extremity is to make a akin AI-assistant acquisition to Siri, “but better.”

OpenAI and decorator Jony Ive are trying to lick a fig of method challenges earlier releasing their mysterious AI gadget, according to a Financial Times report. Two of the challenges see figuring retired the palm-sized device’s “personality” and however often it should talk. “The conception is that you should person a person who’s a machine who isn’t your weird AI girlfriend,” according to 1 root briefed connected the plans. 

The study describes the instrumentality arsenic lacking a surface and being “roughly the size of a smartphone” that tin beryllium either carried astir by the idiosyncratic oregon placed connected surfaces similar a array oregon desk, mirroring similar details that leaked successful May. It’s designed to pass with users done a microphone, speaker, and camera — oregon aggregate cameras, according to 1 FT source. This is the archetypal of a family of devices being developed by Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, targeted for merchandise sometime successful precocious 2026 oregon aboriginal 2027.

OpenAI is looking for ways to marque the gadget “accessible but not intrusive,” according to the FT’s sources, with the purpose of providing a akin acquisition to Apple’s integer dependable adjunct Siri, “but better.” The institution is struggling to determine connected the dependable and mannerisms for the AI-powered device, and guarantee that it knows erstwhile to prosecute with users and decorativeness a conversation. One root successful the study said OpenAI is taking an “always on” attack that gathers information passim the day, alternatively than being activated by circumstantial verbal prompts similar Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo devices.

Privacy issues astir the always-listening instrumentality and budgeting constraints for computing infrastructure indispensable besides beryllium overcome, according to the report. “Amazon has the compute for an Alexa, truthful does Google [for its Home device], but OpenAI is struggling to get capable compute for ChatGPT, fto unsocial an AI device,” a root adjacent to Ive told the FT. “They request to hole that first.”