Bloomberg: OpenAI's First Device Will Be a Screenless, Moving Speaker
OpenAI's first hardware product isn't a phone or a pair of glasses, according to Bloomberg's sourced reporting: it's a screenless, portable smart speaker that can move on its own, positioned as a humanlike "AI companion" that lives in your home. OpenAI hasn't said anything officially — everything here rests on the report.
In brief
- What it reportedly is: no display, but a camera and sensors, and a rechargeable battery so you can carry it room to room. Mechanical parts that move on their own give it a sense of personality.
- What it will do: control smart-home devices, play media, answer questions, reply to messages, and tap ChatGPT's capabilities. It's expected to learn its owner from personal data like emails and anticipate their needs.
- Who's behind it: OpenAI paid $6.5B last year for io Products, co-founded by Jony Ive; Ive's studio LoveFrom and former Apple designers and engineers who worked on the iPhone and Mac are building the device. It's the first of roughly five hardware products in development.
- Timeline and legal: an unveiling is targeted for this year, with a release in 2027. Apple sued OpenAI last week over alleged trade-secret theft; the suit names OpenAI's hardware chief Tang Tan, formerly Apple's head of iPhone product design.
Our take
A caveat first: none of this came from OpenAI — it rests on Bloomberg's sources, and if the device ships in 2027, there's nothing for you to do about it today. Still, the direction is telling: OpenAI is trying to take AI off the screen and put it in the middle of the room. The idea of "something that lives in your home and knows you" instead of a phone app shows where the interface war is heading. There's also an uncomfortable side: putting a device with a camera and sensors that reads your emails and "knows" you in your living room takes data privacy to a whole different level. That's the real question that needs answering before it ever reaches a shelf.
Kaynak: Bloomberg