It felt more like the trailer for a Hollywood blockbuster than a company video. Spliced between sweeping shots of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay Area appeared the words: "Two friends… Working together… For two years."
The first of those friends revealed himself in a voiceover: "We are sitting at the beginning of what I believe will be the greatest technological revolution of our lifetimes." They were spoken with the unmistakable hubris, and signature vocal fry, of Sam Altman – Silicon Valley's biggest box office draw since his company OpenAI launched ChatGPT just over two and a half years ago.
The nine minute video, which cost $3 million and was directed by an Academy Award-winning director, announced the sequel to the world's most popular AI chatbot – yet no specific details were given.
Instead, viewers were left to guess what the collaboration between Altman and his new best friend Jony Ive will actually be. The British designer, who himself has been a darling of Silicon Valley since overseeing the design of the iPhone and MacBook Pro with Apple, claims the mysterious new AI device is the best thing he has ever done. Altman says it is "the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen".
In the two weeks since the partnership was announced, rumours and guesses about what form the product might take have included a clothes pin, smart glasses, a smartwatch, and even a butt plug. But in an internal staff call leaked to the Wall Street Journal, Altman said it wasn't something you wear on (or in) your body.
He described it as a "third core device" – with the first and second core being a computer and a smartphone – and told employees that it would increase OpenAI's value by $1 trillion. The reason for the secrecy, he said, was to stop competitors trying to beat them to market.
He claimed in the call that when it does launch next year that it will ship "faster than any company has ever shipped 100 million of something new before". OpenAI has precedent with such popularity, with ChatGPT becoming the world's fastest-growing app, reaching 100 million active users within two months of its launch in November 2022.
Ive said in a 2024 interview that his next device will be an effort to counteract the "unintended consequences" of the iPhone – suggesting there will be no screen. So if it's not a phone and not a wearable, will it be a brand new product category? A holdable, in the form of a sensor-filled puck or pebble?
Whatever it is, there is apparently already a prototype. Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of former Apple boss Steve Jobs, has seen various iterations of the gadget during its development. In an interview with the FT this week she said she has watched "in real time how ideas go from a thought to some words, to some drawings, to some stories, and then to prototypes, and then a different prototype. And then something that you think: I can't imagine that getting any better. Then seeing the next version, which is even better. Just watching something brand new be manifested, it's a wondrous thing to behold."
Billed in the announcement as "Sam and Jony" (they seemingly missed a trick with the synchronicity of the pair's 'AI' initials), the partnership brings together the man behind arguably the defining technologies of the last two decades, with the man behind the defining technology of this decade so far.
People have been speculating about the "end of the smartphone era" for more than a decade, but we currently use them more than ever (as evidenced in the chart below). In the same interview with Powell Jobs on Monday, Ives expressed a sense of regret for his role in creating the iPhone, claiming that "humanity deserves better".
Concluding OpenAI's video, Apple's former chief design officer appeared more hopeful about what comes next.
"Everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this place, and to this moment," he said. "I am absolutely certain that we are literally on the brink of a new generation of technology that can make us our better selves."
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