sam altman, Jony Ive and Laurene Powell Jobs

(Emerson Collective/YouTube)

Altman: OpenAI’s AI gadget now has a prototype

Don’t get too excited — the actual product could be nearly two years away.

11/24/25 12:17PM

Remember the mysterious AI gadget that OpenAI is cooking up in its labs under the direction of former Apple design guru Jony Ive? According to CEO Sam Altman, the product is now in the prototype phase, and he vaguely disclosed some of the details.

At the Emerson Collective’s Demo Day conference with Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, sitting alongside Jony Ive, Altman reflected on the progress the company has made since buying Ive’s company.

On the unusual partnership between himself and Ive, Altman said:

“...finally, we have the first prototypes. I can’t believe how jaw-droppingly good the work is and how exciting it is, but also now getting to have like — the benefit of hindsight and looking at the progress, the process backwards, how much it’s all in there and how it wouldn’t have worked any other way.”

When Jobs pushed on the pair to reveal some detail about the gadget, Altman said:

“An early thing we talked about with the devices we hope to build is if you have this really smart AI that you trust to do things for you over long periods of time, filter things out. Be able to be contextually aware of when it should not only not really bother you, but when it should present information to you or ask for your input or not.”

Altman said he and Ive agreed that today’s devices offer so many stimuli that it can be overwhelming for users, so they are trying to move past that:

“You trust it over time. And when it does have just this incredible contextual awareness of your whole life, you can then go for a vibe that is not like, you know, walking through Times Square and getting bumped into and having all this stuff compete for your attention, but like sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and sort of just enjoying the peace and calm.”

In the only vague reference to the form of the gadget, Altman said:

“And there was an earlier prototype that we were like, quite excited about, but I did not have any feeling of like, I want to pick up that thing and take a bite out of it. And then finally we got there all of a sudden, yeah.”

The product is expected to be ready in less than two years.

Chris Stokel-Walker

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Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

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Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

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TAKING ACCOUNTS

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Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

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Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5