OpenAI’s efforts to create and sell an “AI companion” device reportedly have serious obstacles to overcome. These are existential, including how the company can find enough computing resources to enable the artificial intelligence devices to function.
That’s good news for Apple, as there have been predictions that products designed specifically for AI might someday take the place of the iPhone and other smartphones.
OpenAI’s AI companion runs into problems
This spring, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed an ambitious plan to create an AI-powered device in collaboration with former Apple design chief Jony Ive. The AI companion is intended to redefine how users interact with artificial intelligence.
Development isn’t going as quickly as the company had hoped, according to a report published Monday by the Financial Times. There are three major challenges remaining.
OpenAI needs to work out how often the device should talk to its user. “One issue is ensuring the device only chimes in when useful, preventing it from talking too much or not knowing when to finish the conversation,” says the report.
“The concept is that you should have a friend who’s a computer who isn’t your weird AI girlfriend,” one unnamed source told the Financial Times.
So much server drain
And that’s not the only problem. The company’s AI device is intended to run constantly, sending video and audio to OpenAI servers for processing. That’s going to put a considerable drain on those servers. The company already struggles to meet computing demand from users posting questions and requests to ChatGPT and Sora, and its server costs are in the billions of dollars annually, so it’s not sure how to ramp that up even more.
The third problem reportedly bedeviling the development of OpenAI’s AI device is related to the second one. A device that’s constantly watching and listening to its user and sending that data to servers presents enormous privacy concerns.
To be clear, OpenAI has no solutions for these problems yet, according to the Financial Times.
Jony Ive not struggling with OpenAI hardware design
However, hardware design isn’t one of the challenges — Apple alum Jony Ive doesn’t seem to have any problems. Exactly what the device will look like remains a closely held secret, though. When announcing the product, Altman specifically noted that the device won’t be a phone or glasses. According to the new Financial Times article, it’ll be both portable and able to sit on a desk.
Also unknown is the price for OpenAI’s AI companion. A release date remains a mystery, too.
OpenAI versus Apple and Android
OpenAI is the most prominent company in the AI boom, but it faces a significant problem: Its software and services must be accessed through computers made by its rivals, including Apple, HP and Samsung. That gives those companies a measure of control over the success and potential failure of OpenAI.
The obvious answer is for OpenAI to make its own hardware — hence its move toward an AI companion. If Sam Altman and his team successfully overcome the serious problems hobbling the development of such a product, it could become a rival to the iPhone and Android as the device most people carry around to keep in contact with the world.
