OpenAI says its AI device will be “multimodal” but doesn’t give many more details
Here’s what we know about the Jony Ive and OpenAI device so far.
In an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar was most clear about what she couldn’t say about the company’s forthcoming AI device. She wouldn’t say how the device, which former Apple design lead Jony Ive is helping to develop, would look, how she uses it, or whether or not it would require a phone.
What she did say was that it would be “multimodal.”
“In a multimodal world for AI, what is beautiful about these models is they are as good through text as they are through being able to talk, language, to be able to listen, auditorily, to be able to visually see,” Friar said.
We might be reading too deep, but to us that suggests the device will have a keyboard, speakers, and a screen... much like a phone!
Cellphones, she said, have accustomed us to looking down at our screens and “talking with our thumbs.”
“I’m looking forward to being able to bring something into the world that I think starts to shift that,” Friar said. She added that she believes “it will open the door to technology that is being shut to many, many people,” and cited a visually impaired parent as an example of someone who might have trouble using a smartphone.
To review what’s been reported about the personal assistant AI device so far:
It will be “palm-sized” or “roughly the size of a smartphone.”
The device will be “always on” so, unlike Amazon’s Alexa, it won’t need a wake word.
It’s meant to be a “companion” for everyday life.
Users will communicate with the device “through a camera, microphone and speaker.”
It will be “fully aware of a user’s surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, [and] able to rest in one’s pocket or on one’s desk,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
Developers are conceiving of it as a third device people will need, in addition to an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, but one that isn’t a phone or glasses.
It’s meant to wean users off screens.
It could include headphones or cameras.
OpenAI plans to ship 100 million of these devices “faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before.”
The release date is expected to be by late 2026.
It’s not going to kill the iPhone... yet. “In the same way that the smartphone didn’t make the laptop go away, I don’t think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Bloomberg. “It is a totally new kind of thing.”
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