Jony Ive confirmed that his LoveFrom company will design a ChatGPT device in partnership with OpenAI. Is this the iPhone of AI?
Reports about a year ago said that former Apple design guru Jony Ive was working to create the “iPhone of artificial intelligence” in partnership with OpenAI. This would become the first first-party ChatGPT device, with the startup rumored to be looking for around $1 billion in funding to start this endeavor.
Months later, we learned that Jony Ive had hired another former iPhone designer who had just departed Apple, Tang Tan. I saw it at the time as another hint that a ChatGPT device was indeed in the works.
None of the parties involved confirmed any of these rumors in the year since those initial reports.
Fast-forward to mid-September, and Jony Ive says the project is real. His company, LoveFrom, will be involved with designing this mysterious new iPhone competitor. More interestingly, Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective is funding the startup in addition to Ive himself. The project is seeking $1 billion in funding by the end of the year.
Those reports last year almost always featured three names involved in the ChatGPT hardware project. Jony Ive and Sam Altman are the obvious first two.
