Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI.
Sam Altman has dismissed rumors claiming that OpenAI was working with former Apple design chief Jony Ive on an AI-powered device. Here’s what he said.
During the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman clarified that the company isn’t looking to create an AI-powered device with former Apple design chief Jony Ive.
For those uninitiated, The Information reported last month that Apple’s former chief of design, Jony Ive, was working with OpenAI to create the “iPhone of AI,” and that the initiative had already attracted high-profile investors, including SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Microsoft, which is already backing OpenAI for its generative AI endeavors.
Now, as spotted by The Verge, Altman has denied these claims during the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event when he said, “I think there is something great to do, but I don’t know what it is yet,” and that he has no interest in “trying to compete with the smartphone. It’s phenomenal at what it does.” Furthermore, Altman also described OpenAI’s work in the hardware space as “nascent.”
Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how companies like OpenAI will respond to the growing hardware-generative AI integration offered by rival companies like Meta (with Meta Quest 3) and Amazon (new AI-powered Echo devices). OpenAI, for now, doesn’t have a hardware product to compete with rivals in the hardware space but only has a strong footing with the GPT-4 Large Language Model that powers its ChatGPT chatbot, and a host of other APIs made available to external entities.
With that said, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has recently gained multiple noteworthy features, including new voice and image features for Plus and enterprise users. Enabling the Voice feature on iOS and Android requires manual phone settings, while images will work on all platforms.
