Legal filings submitted earlier this month from lawyers representing OpenAI and Jony Ive’s io reveal new details about the companies’ efforts to build a mass-market AI hardware device.
The filings are part of a trademark dispute lawsuit filed this month by iyO, a Google-backed hardware startup developing custom-molded earpieces that connect to other devices. Over the weekend, OpenAI pulled promotional materials related to its $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s io startup in order to comply with a court order involved in the suit. OpenAI says it’s fighting iyO’s allegations of trademark infringement.
For the last year, OpenAI executives and former Apple leaders now working at io have vigorously researched in-ear hardware devices, according to filings submitted in iyO’s lawsuit. In a June 12 filing, lawyers representing OpenAI and io said the companies purchased at least 30 headphone sets from various companies to explore what’s on the market today. In recent months, OpenAI and io executives also met with iyO’s leadership, and demoed their in-ear technology, according to emails revealed in the case.
That said, OpenAI’s first device in collaboration with io may not be a pair of headphones at all.
Tang Tan, a longtime Apple executive that co-founded io and serves as the startup’s chief hardware officer, claims in a declaration to the court that the prototype OpenAI CEO Sam Altman mentioned in io’s launch video “is not an in-ear device, nor a wearable device.” Tan notes that the design of said prototype in not yet finalized, and that the product is at least a year away from being advertised or offered for sale.
The form factor of OpenAI and io’s first hardware device has largely remained a mystery. Altman merely stated in io’s launch video that the startup was working to create a “family” of AI devices with various capabilities, and Ive said io’s first prototype “completely captured” his imagination.
Altman had previously told OpenAI’s employees at a meeting that the company’s prototype, when finished, would able to fit in a pocket or sit on a desk, according to the Wall Street Journal. The OpenAI CEO reportedly said the device would be fully aware of a user’s surroundings, and that it would be a “third device” for consumers to use alongside their smartphone and laptop.
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“Our intent with this collaboration was, and is, to create products that go beyond traditional products and interfaces,” said Altman in a declaration to the court submitted on June 12.
Lawyers representing OpenAI also said in a filing that the company has explored a wide range of devices, including ones that were “desktop-based and mobile, wireless and wired, wearable and portable.”
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