> I don’t wanna carry another device with me all the time
And that's why this (and any other stand alone "AI device") is doomed to fail.
We solved this problem already in 2007. "An iPod. A phone. An internet communicator. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices."
The industry has been chasing that high ever since, failing to stop and consider that maybe the smartphone is effectively peak consumer tech as a delivery vehicle for various services.
OpenAI is just upset that they don't get to own the delivery vehicle, Google and Apple do.
I find it ironic that between the money they have raised, the talent they have in-house, and the quasi-super intelligence they have at their disposal, you would think they could have just created their own brand of smartphone (or done something like One Plus / Nothing).
Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have all tried to create their own smartphone since Android has been around. Why do you think OpenAI would succeed?
Even if they did make the new physical device, are you suggesting they create a new OS and ask developers to port their apps? It seems like a non-starter.
I think the only way this could work is if they sold me a box I could put at home, then access it on any of my existing devices as your own actual private instance. One device for the whole family or something.
The description makes me think that it's targeted at the "screenless" trend. Especially among young people there is a trend to cut down on smartphone usage. This device would fit right in with that: no screen, status display with LEDs and oldschool moving parts (presumably engineered to be cute or endearing). Something to carry around when you don't want to be distracted by the temptations on your phone screen
The irony of selling an AI assistant with that premise is not lost on me
People don't have to actually follow through with the trend to buy the product, only think they want to. Same as selling fitness products to people who end up doing very little fitness
> The description makes me think that it's targeted at the "screenless" trend. Especially among young people there is a trend to cut down on smartphone usage.
Perhaps so, but I don't think it is going to do very well in this demographic.
You know what young people hate way more than overuse of screens? AI.
Following the same reasoning, smartwatches would have been a failure. They might be niche, but sales prove there is a market to explore/deepen.
Overall, openAI can sit on a mountain of money and bet mobile phones are the final form factor for human/AI interaction, as they have been for human/internet.
Or deploy some of that money and figure out whether that is true.
It’s also about creating an environment for those features to emerge, without being constrained by someone else platform, that could natively embed it at any time, and (probably more important) app marketplaces.
A signal for opportunity is also given by Apple’s inability to give their users Siri and Google sitting on transformers while OpenAI grabs the chatbot marketplace.
Also, anything they build does not cannibalize their other product lines.
There are lots of incentives for them to try out and figure out features on the fly, which arguably also happened with the IPhone (app store).
People were already wearing watches along smartphones. Smartwatches didn’t need a new user habit formation.
You can definitely create new habits (like people wearing ear buds for hours a day) but need a strong thesis and cost-benefit analysis that is net positive when considering alternatives.
It's going to be a phone, a screenless phone. Which is fine I guess, but only the obnoxious people that watch youtube on speaker with everyone giving them a death stare are going to use this. Maybe that's a bit too harsh, it will definately have a bluetooth connection for earbuds, so it might not be so grating. If they roll the data into the ChatGPT subscription, it will probably pick up a decent # of users. I can't imagine having a main device only use a voice interface though. Skimming an email visually is way more efficient than having an LLM summarize it.
A device thats worse than the phone you already have, which is dead the second you stop paying your monthly OpenAI sub, and is useless if you decide you prefer other LLM provider. Where do we sign up?
Voice is almost always the worst, most frustrating interface.
Amazon, Google, and Apple are already entrenched in the space. It's not like any of them have toxic brands like Oracle where everyone is dying to free themselves. Most people are happy with their products.
Not sure about the others, but a Google Home device with Gemini enabled gives you basically short conversational LLM interactions. It can set timers and play music and all that, but you can also pretty much ask it any random question and it will give you an LLM answer.
It's far more useful than the previous Google Assistant answers which were always of the form, "According to petmd.com - [direct quote]".
I've had a good time using my Google Home devices exclusively as kitchen timers and music playing devices, though they semi frequently get song requests wrong.
Judging by the frequent frustration I've witnessed whenever visiting two separate friends who own Alexas, no they are not good now.
On another note, I am continuously flabbergasted that even Google cannot get an agentic LLM assistant right. I used to use the Google Assistant ALL the time when it did not make use of LLM's. It was AMAZING. I could just say "wake me up at 7" and it would understand that I meant 7AM the next day, or call "mom", or "set a timer for 10 minutes" while I'm cooking. It was genuinely useful to me.
Google Assistant last week sent me to the Google Search page with my prompt "wake me up at 7am", and Gemini read out loud "setting an alarm for 7am tomorrow morning". But it was bullshit, it doesn't have the power to set alarms, it was just gaslighting me.
> Gemini read out loud "setting an alarm for 7am tomorrow morning". But it was bullshit, it doesn't have the power to set alarms, it was just gaslighting me.
The Gemini on my Google Home has the ability to set alarms. Maybe it's a permissions issue on your device.
I'm talking about the Google app on every Android with gapps on it. It used to be able to do this for you, and now it just does web search. It's a massive downgrade.
The other article pitched it as an "AI Companion". I can see the market already; virtual girlfriends or virtual friends for the homebound. People will buy a "Companion subscription" that will allow them to talk their friend all day. It will be very successful. I feel bad for any human moderators that will have to wade through these conversations.
But why can’t this exist on a smartphone? A huge existing install base and, in an iPhone at least, compute capability that will surely far exceed anything that OpenAI can produce.
I would think it is pesky Apple permissions in the way. OpenAI with camera and microphone will literally suck up all your data without Apple being the middle man.
By starting this line of devices I can Open Ai working to create Joi the virtual girlfriend from Bladerunner 2049.
https://youtu.be/y-a3YshkPRc
Privacy nightmare + worse UX than a phone or sitting at your desk? Dead on arrival. Not a fan of Alexa but at least it can change what you're currently viewing on your Fire stick.
Counterpoint: the number of product lines in the space shows high customer demand, but the existing products are all pretty bad. If OpenAI can deliver a better product with a business model that works that's a huge market opportunity
This seems like a more expensive version of the rabbit or friend ai pins.
What is going to differentiate this above any of (1) my phone that can use any AI provider and I can already carry around the home, (2) a set of smart speakers that can talk to an AI provider like google home/homepod/alexa, or (3) my computer?
You absolutely can just press a button on a phone to instantly start an AI voice conversation. Heck, you don't even need to press a button in a lot of cases.
Assuming instead of being another phone or voice assistant: It might make sense as a local AI server/proxy expanding to home assistant/TV. If they could claim to need to have device id's to avoid their models being scraped, they could force users to use their device proxy and avoid middlemen (likely by making it cheaper than direct access), and likely save a lot of server time by doing some processing locally on client's dime. Then they could start to play the device-id game with 2-factor authentication, etc. and their stock would track their install base like Comcast STB's.
This feels like the obvious future. Everybody doom scrolls on their phones too much, but we can’t get rid of them because of the convenience of the productive things we can do when we need to.
So if there was a way to enable the productivity (or even multiply it, let’s be real) without the doomscrolling, a lot of people would go for that.
Not to mention the endless fiddling we’ve had to resort to with phones. We’ve gotten used to it, but apps for everything is such a cognitive burden on people. A screen-less AI assistant is the perfect solution for this. I can’t wait.
People like doomscrolling. They could uninstall their doomscroll apps, but they won't. This puck wouldn't stop most from doomscrolling either. Probably a few, but it's already possible for a few people to stop doomscrolling.
I keep seeing this argument, but there is nothing preventing anyone from purchasing a "dumb" phone. How would you envision multiplying your productivity in the day-to-day with a voice interface?
The device is presumably listening and recording everything and you can bet your last dollar there is fine print in the TOS that says Altman actually owns everything you say near the device and can use it for whatever he wants.
Oh, you thought you bought the device! Silly peasant! you just have the privilege of paying me to rent the device from me. Remember you will own nothing and will be happy.
Given the almost universal negative press about Altman, I wonder how many people would actually want a device from Sam 'let me scan your eyeballs for make believe money' Altman in their home.
I feel like there will be a minimal UI/no screen but it will have 9 far field microphones. 2-3 cameras , an iris scanner, GPS, and lidar. This is because it is a data collection device for use in OpenAI's future models, more than it is a an assistant.
I wonder what exact features this would provide that the mobile app cannot. I don’t wanna carry another device with me all the time
> I don’t wanna carry another device with me all the time
And that's why this (and any other stand alone "AI device") is doomed to fail.
We solved this problem already in 2007. "An iPod. A phone. An internet communicator. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices."
The industry has been chasing that high ever since, failing to stop and consider that maybe the smartphone is effectively peak consumer tech as a delivery vehicle for various services.
OpenAI is just upset that they don't get to own the delivery vehicle, Google and Apple do.
I find it ironic that between the money they have raised, the talent they have in-house, and the quasi-super intelligence they have at their disposal, you would think they could have just created their own brand of smartphone (or done something like One Plus / Nothing).
Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have all tried to create their own smartphone since Android has been around. Why do you think OpenAI would succeed?
Even if they did make the new physical device, are you suggesting they create a new OS and ask developers to port their apps? It seems like a non-starter.
I think the only way this could work is if they sold me a box I could put at home, then access it on any of my existing devices as your own actual private instance. One device for the whole family or something.
The description makes me think that it's targeted at the "screenless" trend. Especially among young people there is a trend to cut down on smartphone usage. This device would fit right in with that: no screen, status display with LEDs and oldschool moving parts (presumably engineered to be cute or endearing). Something to carry around when you don't want to be distracted by the temptations on your phone screen
The irony of selling an AI assistant with that premise is not lost on me
That trend is a pipedream!
In the US roughly half of teens said they were online “almost constantly"
Just look around kids 8-20 are basically: Fortnite + Roblox + TikTok + YouTube + Netflix + phone all day
People don't have to actually follow through with the trend to buy the product, only think they want to. Same as selling fitness products to people who end up doing very little fitness
> The description makes me think that it's targeted at the "screenless" trend. Especially among young people there is a trend to cut down on smartphone usage.
Perhaps so, but I don't think it is going to do very well in this demographic.
You know what young people hate way more than overuse of screens? AI.
But you'll still need to pull out your phone to figure out what it's trying to tell you when it morphs into a pair of lips.
Following the same reasoning, smartwatches would have been a failure. They might be niche, but sales prove there is a market to explore/deepen.
Overall, openAI can sit on a mountain of money and bet mobile phones are the final form factor for human/AI interaction, as they have been for human/internet.
Or deploy some of that money and figure out whether that is true.
It’s also about creating an environment for those features to emerge, without being constrained by someone else platform, that could natively embed it at any time, and (probably more important) app marketplaces.
A signal for opportunity is also given by Apple’s inability to give their users Siri and Google sitting on transformers while OpenAI grabs the chatbot marketplace.
Also, anything they build does not cannibalize their other product lines.
There are lots of incentives for them to try out and figure out features on the fly, which arguably also happened with the IPhone (app store).
People were already wearing watches along smartphones. Smartwatches didn’t need a new user habit formation.
You can definitely create new habits (like people wearing ear buds for hours a day) but need a strong thesis and cost-benefit analysis that is net positive when considering alternatives.
> I don’t wanna carry another device with me all the time
Hopefully they've learned from the mistakes of the Humane AI pin and/or the Rabbit R1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_r1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Inc.
EDIT:
From the article "The idea is to make the device easy to carry around the home with one hand".
I don't understand the market target at all for this device. You want the equivalent of the Amazon Echo Dot but you also carry around your house?
It will probably be pretty.
And puckish.
It's going to be a phone, a screenless phone. Which is fine I guess, but only the obnoxious people that watch youtube on speaker with everyone giving them a death stare are going to use this. Maybe that's a bit too harsh, it will definately have a bluetooth connection for earbuds, so it might not be so grating. If they roll the data into the ChatGPT subscription, it will probably pick up a decent # of users. I can't imagine having a main device only use a voice interface though. Skimming an email visually is way more efficient than having an LLM summarize it.
A device thats worse than the phone you already have, which is dead the second you stop paying your monthly OpenAI sub, and is useless if you decide you prefer other LLM provider. Where do we sign up?
Voice is almost always the worst, most frustrating interface.
Isn't this a plateaued market?
Amazon, Google, and Apple are already entrenched in the space. It's not like any of them have toxic brands like Oracle where everyone is dying to free themselves. Most people are happy with their products.
This seems like a tough move...
I haven't kept up. Are Siri, Alexa or Google's smart speakers any good now? Or are they still mostly for setting timers and controlling spotify?
I had one of those Apple speakers (HomePod Mini) and the only other thing I ever did with it was speaker phone calls. It was really good that that.
I ended up selling it for $50 or something.
Not sure about the others, but a Google Home device with Gemini enabled gives you basically short conversational LLM interactions. It can set timers and play music and all that, but you can also pretty much ask it any random question and it will give you an LLM answer.
It's far more useful than the previous Google Assistant answers which were always of the form, "According to petmd.com - [direct quote]".
I've had a good time using my Google Home devices exclusively as kitchen timers and music playing devices, though they semi frequently get song requests wrong.
Can't speak for the other's but Siri asks me if I wanna use ChatGPT when the questions get hard
Judging by the frequent frustration I've witnessed whenever visiting two separate friends who own Alexas, no they are not good now.
On another note, I am continuously flabbergasted that even Google cannot get an agentic LLM assistant right. I used to use the Google Assistant ALL the time when it did not make use of LLM's. It was AMAZING. I could just say "wake me up at 7" and it would understand that I meant 7AM the next day, or call "mom", or "set a timer for 10 minutes" while I'm cooking. It was genuinely useful to me.
Google Assistant last week sent me to the Google Search page with my prompt "wake me up at 7am", and Gemini read out loud "setting an alarm for 7am tomorrow morning". But it was bullshit, it doesn't have the power to set alarms, it was just gaslighting me.
> Gemini read out loud "setting an alarm for 7am tomorrow morning". But it was bullshit, it doesn't have the power to set alarms, it was just gaslighting me.
The Gemini on my Google Home has the ability to set alarms. Maybe it's a permissions issue on your device.
I'm talking about the Google app on every Android with gapps on it. It used to be able to do this for you, and now it just does web search. It's a massive downgrade.
Gemini sets alarms for me in Android all the time via voice chat all the time. Did you give it permission to interact with the apps?
The other article pitched it as an "AI Companion". I can see the market already; virtual girlfriends or virtual friends for the homebound. People will buy a "Companion subscription" that will allow them to talk their friend all day. It will be very successful. I feel bad for any human moderators that will have to wade through these conversations.
But why can’t this exist on a smartphone? A huge existing install base and, in an iPhone at least, compute capability that will surely far exceed anything that OpenAI can produce.
I would think it is pesky Apple permissions in the way. OpenAI with camera and microphone will literally suck up all your data without Apple being the middle man.
By starting this line of devices I can Open Ai working to create Joi the virtual girlfriend from Bladerunner 2049. https://youtu.be/y-a3YshkPRc
For a moment I read "Jony the virtual girlfriend" and visualized a smiley avatar of Mr Ive greeting you when coming home.
Gotta start v1 somewhere and ChatGPT was and is a big enough threat to Google Search.
Privacy nightmare + worse UX than a phone or sitting at your desk? Dead on arrival. Not a fan of Alexa but at least it can change what you're currently viewing on your Fire stick.
https://archive.ph/l3i2J
This thing is dead on arrival. The space is already crowded and no one needs another device listening in your house. Already plenty to choose from.
Counterpoint: the number of product lines in the space shows high customer demand, but the existing products are all pretty bad. If OpenAI can deliver a better product with a business model that works that's a huge market opportunity
Why do I need to agree to arbitration and waive class action lawsuits to read an article?
This seems like a more expensive version of the rabbit or friend ai pins. What is going to differentiate this above any of (1) my phone that can use any AI provider and I can already carry around the home, (2) a set of smart speakers that can talk to an AI provider like google home/homepod/alexa, or (3) my computer?
1. You can't just press a button on your phone to instantly start an ai voice conversation
2. You can't bring your smart speakers with you everywhere, also same as 1
3. See 1 and 2
Yes you can. Many phones have a dedicated "assistant" button now that you can assign to your AI assistant app.
You absolutely can just press a button on a phone to instantly start an AI voice conversation. Heck, you don't even need to press a button in a lot of cases.
Assuming instead of being another phone or voice assistant: It might make sense as a local AI server/proxy expanding to home assistant/TV. If they could claim to need to have device id's to avoid their models being scraped, they could force users to use their device proxy and avoid middlemen (likely by making it cheaper than direct access), and likely save a lot of server time by doing some processing locally on client's dime. Then they could start to play the device-id game with 2-factor authentication, etc. and their stock would track their install base like Comcast STB's.
This feels like the obvious future. Everybody doom scrolls on their phones too much, but we can’t get rid of them because of the convenience of the productive things we can do when we need to.
So if there was a way to enable the productivity (or even multiply it, let’s be real) without the doomscrolling, a lot of people would go for that.
Not to mention the endless fiddling we’ve had to resort to with phones. We’ve gotten used to it, but apps for everything is such a cognitive burden on people. A screen-less AI assistant is the perfect solution for this. I can’t wait.
People like doomscrolling. They could uninstall their doomscroll apps, but they won't. This puck wouldn't stop most from doomscrolling either. Probably a few, but it's already possible for a few people to stop doomscrolling.
I keep seeing this argument, but there is nothing preventing anyone from purchasing a "dumb" phone. How would you envision multiplying your productivity in the day-to-day with a voice interface?
Maybe based off the proprietary Apple expertise that led to the hockey puck mouse.
The device is presumably listening and recording everything and you can bet your last dollar there is fine print in the TOS that says Altman actually owns everything you say near the device and can use it for whatever he wants.
Oh, you thought you bought the device! Silly peasant! you just have the privilege of paying me to rent the device from me. Remember you will own nothing and will be happy.
Given the almost universal negative press about Altman, I wonder how many people would actually want a device from Sam 'let me scan your eyeballs for make believe money' Altman in their home.
A real life companion cube, even with the same corporate juggernaut flavor.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41042929
So its a competitor to Homepod and Alexa, but more capable, possibly through Computer Use among other agentic workflows people have today.
Reads more like a toy/pet (think Kirby) to me, so it could actually not be a competitor at all to those.
Whether that’s a viable product I don’t know.
Tamagotchi but you feed it tokens
I think you meant Furby
If Johny Ives delivers a hockey puck then he is diminished in my eyes.
Of all the things you could breath AI life into, what could be more boring, bland and already done than the Alexa hockey puck.
I feel like there will be a minimal UI/no screen but it will have 9 far field microphones. 2-3 cameras , an iris scanner, GPS, and lidar. This is because it is a data collection device for use in OpenAI's future models, more than it is a an assistant.
I hope it has little arms that gesticulate while it talks, like Stan from the Monkey Island games. Maybe it could have a Trump mode as well.
Oh it will have Trump mode, just not the funny one you want
It's gonna be yuge.
https://archive.ph/l3i2J
https://archive.is/l3i2J
Related:
Apple sues OpenAI, accuses ex-employees of stealing trade secrets
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48865019
“ No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
non-paywall: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/what-is-o...