Jony Ive became famous for his role as Apple’s chief designer, as he was responsible for many important projects at the company. Ive left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm, LoveFrom, and has since worked with partners including Airbnb and Ferrari. According to a new report, Ive is now discussing a new “artificial intelligence hardware” project with Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Jony Ive may help OpenAI create new hardware
According to The Information, Ive was in talks with Altman about creating a new artificial intelligence device. It’s unclear at this point what the device’s purpose will be or what it will look like, but sources familiar with the conversations say they want to create “new hardware for the age of artificial intelligence.”
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Interestingly, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, also known as an investor, is reportedly involved in conversations between Jony Ive and Altman. The report notes that OpenAI has already raised $11 billion from major investors, including Khosla Ventures and even Mictosoft.
OpenAI is the developer of the popular ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer questions, write articles, and even write code. Microsoft, for example, invested in OpenAI after integrating ChatGPT with its own software. At the same time, this news comes as Apple is independently working on a ChatGPT competitor.
The chatbot, internally named “Apple GPT”, is rumored to be an artificial intelligence chatbot that uses various machine learning projects on a common basis. However, the Bloomberg report also said that the company was considering entering into a commercial agreement to use OpenAI technology after testing its own artificial intelligence technology.
It would be quite interesting to see Jony Ive working on technology that will eventually become an Apple competitor or even be licensed by Apple.
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Ive left Apple after working at the company for more than 20 years. During that time, he continued to help Apple as a consultant. However, Ive’s partnership with Apple came to an end in 2022, so he is no longer involved in the development of Apple products. The last Apple product Ive signed was the 2019 Mac Pro.
Behind the scenes, Ive reportedly helped Apple develop some of its latest products, such as the AirPods Max and M1 iMac.