Jony Ive — the iconic Apple designer who united with OpenAI to create physical AI devices — revealed to longtime friend Laurene Powell Jobs in an onstage interview that his stealth project, already in prototype, will be unveiled within two years.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a joint interview at an Emerson Collective event that Ive's design is elegantly simple, with a touch of whimsy — which sounds very Apple-like.
Why it matters: There's immense curiosity about what Ive and his team are up to. The device he designs could well be the way that everyday people begin to interface fluently with AI.
Powell Jobs — founder and president of Emerson Collective, which invests in entrepreneurs and innovators — interviewed Ive and Altman ("two generational thinkers," she called them) during the group's ninth annual Demo Day, held in San Francisco last Thursday. The interview was made public Monday.
- When Powell Jobs pressed Ive on when people will see the OpenAI devices, he said he thinks "even less than" two years. OpenAI said when the deal was announced last May that the first products were set to be shown in 2026.
What we're watching: "I love solutions that teeter on appearing almost naive in their simplicity," Ive said. "I also love incredibly intelligent, sophisticated products that you want to touch — and you feel no intimidation, and you want to use almost carelessly, that you use them almost without thought, that they're just tools."
- Altman jumped in to add: "I hope that when people see it, they say, 'That's it!'"
- Ive promised: "Yeah, they will."
Behind the scenes: Altman, elaborating on Ive's simplicity mindset, said that AI "can do so much for you that so much can fall away. And the degree to which Jony has chipped away at every little thing that this doesn't need to do or doesn't need to be in there is remarkable."
- "We just started talking about: What does it mean that this thing is going to be able to know everything you've ever thought about, read, said? ... And finally, we have the first prototypes."
Altman recalled that Ive once said they'd know they had the design right when the user wants "to lick it or take a bite out of it, or something like that."
- "There was an earlier prototype that we were quite excited about, but I did not have any feeling of: 'I want to pick up that thing and take a bite out of it.' And then finally we got there all of a sudden."
Altman said the design is "so simple and beautiful and playful, for lack of a better word." Altman told the Demo Day audience that during an early meeting, Ive said: "We are going to make people smile. We are going to make people feel joy. Whatever the product does, it has to do that."
- Altman continued: "And I was like, 'Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Jony. People just want to be efficient. It's fine.' Obvious weakness of mine. But I am so happy that Jony pushed on that. And I didn't realize until things started to come together how much that just doesn't exist in the current set of tech companies, and how lovely it is to have some whimsy back."
Emerson Collective's Demo Day featured 10 demos (including robots Melvin and Henrietta with Dr. Ali Agha, founder and CEO of FieldAI), two fireside chats (including Robert De Niro and French artist JR in conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs) and one performance.
- Watch Laurene's interview with Ive & Altman ... Watch the robots ... Full lineup.
