Apple iPhone Design Legend Jony Ive Joins OpenAI
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said in the video clip that a prototype Ive shared with him "is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.";
SAN FRANCISCO: The legendary designer behind Apple's iPhone, Jony Ive, has joined OpenAI to create devices tailored for using generative artificial intelligence, according to a video posted Wednesday by the ChatGPT maker.
Ive and the team from his latest startup will take over design at OpenAI.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said in the video clip that a prototype Ive shared with him "is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen."
The San Francisco-based startup finished the clip with a message that it looks forward to sharing fruits of the device collaboration next year.
Altman noted that Ive is behind iconic Apple creations such as the iPhone and MacBook Pro, saying a transformational new technology such as AI begs a revolutionary new way to interact with it.
"We have like magic intelligence in the cloud," Altman said.
"This technology deserves something much better" than having to type questions into a laptop, he reasoned.
Ive and a LoveFrom design firm he started after leaving Apple began collaborating with Altman two years ago, according to OpenAI.
"It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company," Altman and Ive said in joint post.
That company -- named "io" -- is merging with OpenAI, with Ive assuming design and creative responsibilities.
"The products that we're using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they are decades old," Ive said.
"So it's just common sense to at least think surely there's something beyond these legacy products."
Altman announced early this month that OpenAI will continue to be run as a nonprofit, abandoning a contested plan to convert into a for-profit organization.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 and later created a "capped" for-profit entity allowing limited profit-making to attract investors, with cloud computing giant Microsoft becoming the largest early backer.
The startup has become one of the most successful in Silicon Valley, propelled to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, its generative AI chatbot.