Apple designer Sir Jony Ive joins OpenAI | EUROtoday

Legendary British designer Sir Jony Ive, who helped create the Apple iPhone, is becoming a member of forces with OpenAI, as the synthetic intelligence (AI) agency units its sights on growing {hardware}.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, will purchase a start-up based by Sir Jony, who will “assume deep design and creative responsibilities” throughout the corporate, the 2 companies mentioned in an announcement.

Open AI boss Sam Altman mentioned the objective was to create a “family of devices” made particularly with AI in thoughts.

The deal comes because the tech trade has been searching for its subsequent {hardware} hit after the iPhone and takes specific goal at Apple, which some say has been shifting too slowly to include AI into its units.

“I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely re-imagine what it means to use a computer,” Mr Altman mentioned in video.

Shares in Apple fell greater than 2% after the announcement.

Sir Jony labored for Apple for greater than 30 years, serving to to revive the corporate with pathbreaking merchandise together with the iPhone and iPod.

He left the agency in 2019 to discovered his personal firm, LoveFrom, which has labored with corporations corresponding to Airbnb and Moncler.

The concept for io, which Sir Jony based final yr, grew out of a number of years of quiet collaboration between the 2 corporations, in response to the announcement.

“It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company,” it mentioned.

OpenAI had a 23% stake within the startup previous to Wednesday’s announcement, in response to US media.

US media reported that the merger valued io at roughly $6.4bn (£4.7bn). LoveFrom will stay impartial.

In the video asserting the merger, Sir Jony mentioned he believed the world was on the “brink of a new generation of technology”.

OpenAI set off a wave of funding in AI in 2022 when it unveiled ChatGPT.

It has continued to push into new areas, corresponding to buying and search, in a problem to established tech giants.

The foray into {hardware} comes as tech rivals corresponding to Meta, Google and Apple have additionally been investing in merchandise corresponding to headsets and glasses, seeing new alternative as a consequence of advances in AI.