It’s been just over a year since OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the company would build an AI-first device with the help of legendary Apple designer Jony Ive. Now we may have an idea of what it might look like.
Firm details about the device have been scant, but on Tuesday, Bloomberg reported, cited people familiar with the matter, what the device may look like: a “screen-free smart speaker designed to be a new type of home computer for the AI era.”
The device is meant to be “human-like” with smart speaker-like features that help control appliances in a user’s home, play media, respond to messages and answer queries by using OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the people added.
The device’s AI capabilities could allow it to better interact with users on a personal level, according to the report. It will also become increasingly personalized and proactive over time as it draws on information like a users’ personal emails. Mechanical parts that move on their own also give users “a sense that it is alive and not just an object responding to commands,” the outlet reported.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
AI device market #
The market for AI-first home devices is still in its infancy. Both Amazon and Google have incorporated AI capabilities into their existing smart speakers. Meanwhile, Google last month also released a new Google Home speaker designed specifically for Gemini.
Still, reviews for Google’s product have thus far been mixed. While critics praised the AI-enabled speaker’s more natural conversations, and especially a paywalled live chat feature called Gemini Live, they also noted the device has a tendency to ignore some questions and can get confused during interactions.
Only a handful of truly AI-first devices exist on the market today. One example that could resemble OpenAI’s planned product—according to Bloomberg’s description—is ElliQ, an AI device designed for older adults that resembles a desk lamp and also has moving parts. First released by Intuition Robotics in 2022, ElliQ, like OpenAI’s device, is meant to be humanlike and comfort elderly people by prompting users several times a day with jokes or questions. The device uses AI to become more personalized to a user over time, and can serve as a companion but also can help track wellness information like heart rate and blood pressure as well as appointments.
In addition, startup Humane advertised its hands-free AI pin as an alternative to smartphones when it released the product in 2024, yet the product was criticized for slow performance and overheating. Ultimately, HP shuttered the product after acquiring the startup last year for $116 million.
OpenAI’s device still has no release date, but in January, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane said it was set to unveil the product in the second half of this year. Even while still in development, the prospect of a new AI-first device to compete with products from established tech giants already has competitors on the defensive.
Last week, Apple sued OpenAI and two of its former employees who joined the startup in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The company alleges OpenAI leveraged the insider knowledge of its ex-employees to build up its fledgling hardware division. The company alleged that OpenAI asked ex-Apple employees in interviews about secret projects and asked them to bring in prototypes.
“OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets,” Apple wrote in the lawsuit.
For its part, an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to multiple outlets that it has no interest in other companies’ trade secrets and that the company remains “focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere.” OpenAI’s new device could supercharge the company’s prospects as it approaches a potential record-breaking IPO after filing the paperwork to go public last month.
While it’s still unclear when OpenAI might list its shares publicly, the company is looking for ways to capitalize on the hundreds of billions of dollars it has raised from investors in the past several years. Last year, the company bought Ive’s design studio IO for a whopping $6.5 billion and announced a partnership with the Apple designer to bring its AI-first product to fruition. At the time of the announcement, the pair said they had been collaborating for about two years.
Altman has said the company is aiming to develop a new family of products that can replace static smartphones and computers.
“Computers, software, and hardware, just the way we think of current computers, were designed for a world without AI,” Altman said on the OpenAI podcast last June. “Now we’re in, like, a very different world, and what you want out of hardware and software is changing quite rapidly.”
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