Jony Ive Teases Novel AI-powered Device with Sam Altman of OpenAI

Five years since the end of his tenure as head designer at Apple in 2019, Jony Ive has now revealed more details about where he is taking his industrial virtuosity next. In a rare New York Times profile of Ive released last week, the inventor offered a glimpse into his joint venture with OpenAI founder Sam Altman, whose powerful generative AI model powers chatbot ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E 2.

The forthcoming project is premised on utilizing “A.I. to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone” as reported by the New York Times. The hints offered by Ive reveal that generative AI will be a major component, and its capabilities perhaps rival the iPhone Ive designed for Apple. Ive also shared more about his acquirement of almost $100M USD in real estate for a new office compound in the Jackson Square neighborhood in San Fransisco, signaling further that his partnership with Altman intended to be a long-term venture.

The new venture’s details arrive no less than a month since Apple released the iPhone16 and shared more regarding the device’s AI-powered functionalities, set to be introduced in October, like a text-to-image emoji generator.

While this will be Ive’s first venture of this scale since leaving Apple, he has continued to lend his innovative eye to other brands by way of his own design and research consultancy LoveFrom. Most recently, Ive and the LoveFrom team partnered with Moncler to design a transformable jacket with proprietary magnetic closures for seamless transition.

Ive and Altman’s grand plans are still under wraps at the moment, but the track records of the two tech pioneers raise high hopes for an innovative disruption to the status quo.