OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has denied rumors of working on the "iPhone of AI", something that might come as a relief to Apple Inc. AAPL.
What Happened: Altman denied reports of working on the "iPhone of AI" with former Apple design legend Sir Jony Ive and SoftBank Group Corp.'s SFTBF Masayoshi Son.
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"I think there is something great to do but I don't know what it is yet," he told Wall Street Journal's Joanna Stern, adding that the concept idea is still "very nascent".
What should come as a bigger relief to Apple is the fact that Altman's vision does not include competing directly with iPhones and other smartphones. "I have no interest in trying to compete with the smartphone," Altman said.
Initial expectations were that at least creating an "iPhone of AI" would take a few years. While Altman has denied reports of a ChatGPT-powered smartphone, he does confirm that the Altman-Ive-Son trio is working on a consumer-centric device.
The idea seems to be the same: make interacting with AI as intuitive and natural as possible. Currently, interacting with any AI-powered service requires the AI to be invoked manually.
Why It Matters: With Microsoft Corp. MSFT being one of the largest shareholders of OpenAI, Altman has the hardware firepower to dip into to launch a consumer device.
Bringing Ive and Son on board the idea gives him the freedom to ideate independently to create a new revenue stream for OpenAI.
Microsoft – which has aggressively integrated OpenAI's GPT technology into Windows, Office, Bing, and other products – will also get to play in the consumer devices segment and offer its expertise to OpenAI in this regard.
Everything now hinges on the device and direction that OpenAI and Altman take. However, we know that OpenAI and Altman are actively working on an AI-powered consumer device.
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