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
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.
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.
The fact that the result is a hockey puck you carry around and talk to should tell you what you need to know about the revolutionary nature of AI.
(Dont get me wrong, it is revolutionary, but more in an Augment our existing world than create a new world for us type way).
Facebook learned this same lesson when they were upset at not being able to control devices that were running their software.
OpenAI is going to learn that same lesson. No one wants a second device.
Though this doesn't work in public settings, so I am also not totally sure what the long-view is..
The irony of selling an AI assistant with that premise is not lost on me
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
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.
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?
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).
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.