A $6.5 billion epic troll, or the real AI future of consumer devices?

Porque no los dos?

In a week absolutely stuffed to overflowing with AI-related news and announcements, one in particular stands out: Sam Altman and Jony Ive revealing ‘io,’ their collaborative effort to design and develop the first generation of truly mass-market consumer AI devices. We’d heard through earlier reports that the collab was on, but this week, the two dropped an absolutely wild trailer for their joint company – along with the news that OpenAI would be acquiring io for $6.5 billion in OpenAI shares.

All delivered in an extremely cinematic, over-the-top, ~9 minute video of two of the world’s most influential tech figures saying with words that they have inimitable connection, while somehow demonstrating absolutely zero actual rapport.

The fact that this odd love story is delivered with nary a hint of human warmth or true affinity probably isn’t due to a lack of connection between these two giants of consumer technology; it’s much more likely that it owes more to the fact that both of these two have achieved mythic status and wealth, and it’s hard for relatability to survive something like that. And regardless of what you think about their interpersonal relationship, the potential of a mashup between the man who designed the single most popular consumer hardware device in all of history and the guy who built the fastest-growing consumer application in history, is off-the-charts interesting.

While we do get some gorgeous shots of San Francisco in this video, and a lot of weird eye-line and reaction shot cut choices in the conversation between the two men that makes up the bulk of the clip’s running time, what we don't get is any actual look at what they’re building. Sam does reference a prototype he says he’s been able to actually use, and definitely doesn’t get hyperbolic with his assessment:

“I’ve been able to live with it and I think it is the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen.”

Ive, meanwhile, expresses an insight that I’ve had, and that so have many others, including members of his former employer Apple who went off and built the Humane AI pin:

“The products that we’re using to deliver and connect us to unimaginable technology, they’re decades old, and so it’s just common sense to at least think, surely there’s something beyond these legacy products.”

I don’t mean to criticize Ive for pointing out something obvious – one of his strengths as a designer and maker of iconic products is that he’s not afraid to dive into those ‘obvious’ truths and help express those insights in the things he makes with exactly the right approach to make them strike their users as the ‘obvious’ default, too. But it is maddeningly faint broth for a ‘big reveal’ that contains no real revelations.

One thing I will criticize is when Altman goes into informercial pitch person mode to describe in extremely overwrought terms the current state of the art of working with AI. From the clip:

If I wanted to ask ChatGPT something right now, about something we had talked about earlier, I would reach down, I would get out my laptop, I’d open it up, I’d launch a web browser, I’d start typing, and I’d have to, like, explain that thing. And I would hit enter, and I would wait, and I would get a response. And that is at the limit of what the current tool of a laptop can do.

Is that really what you would do Sam? Can you not think of a better way to ask ChatGPT a question mid-conversation with a friend in a café? No? Here’s a hint: The man you’re having the conversation with CREATED THE DEVICE that makes that so much simpler and less convoluted! Oh and also your company has a partnership with its maker that bakes ChatGPT directly into the system at the OS level??

Yes, I mean the iPhone.

Set aside that even if you do go with Altman’s method, it’s not actually that complicated a process, and the answer engine will still provide you what you’re looking for with remarkable speed and efficiency – he’s also purposefully choosing the most complicated path when a much easier one is right in front of him. It reminds me of those infomercial segments where people struggle with even the most basic tasks, or with Khaby Lame’s entire oeuvre, for a more contemporary example.

I still do fully agree that we haven’t yet figured out the right approach to take advantage of all that generative AI can offer with our current consumer hardware, as I’ve expressed many times. And I’m still super excited to actually see what these two come up with, to be very clear.

One final note is that it’s extremely entertaining to see the level of petty on display among the foundational model makers right now. This past week alone, we had Google basically fill everyone’s brain buffer in terms of how much AI news we can all process with their I/O developer conference, and Anthropic introduce the next generation of Claude with its Claude 4 Sonnet and Opus models.

Scrambling to one up one another is par for the course for AI model makers these days, but OpenAI pulled off a special coup by announcing one of the most interesting partnerships in technology period during Google’s I/O week while hijacking its own keyword: Not sure if that’s the reason Ive and Altman landed on ‘io’ as the company name for their hardware joint venture, but it certainly helped inform the timing of the drop.

Watch the full announcement in all its self-indulgent glory here: