Last week, OpenAI announced that former Apple design chief Jony Ive and his design firm LoveFrom will take over creative and design control at OpenAI. As Ars Technica reports, the deal makes Ive responsible for shaping the future look and feel of AI products at the chatbot creator, extending across all of the company’s ventures, including ChatGPT.
Ive was Apple’s chief design officer for nearly three decades, where he led the design of iconic products including the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch, earning numerous industry awards and helping transform Apple into the world’s most valuable company through his minimalist design philosophy. Ive left Apple in 2019 to found LoveFrom, a design firm that has worked with companies including Ferrari, Airbnb, and luxury Italian fashion firm Moncler.
“Thrilled to be partnering with jony, imo the greatest designer in the world,” tweeted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman while sharing a 9-minute promotional video touting the personal and professional relationship between Ive and Altman.
In a statement released on May 21, the duo wrote:
This is an extraordinary moment.
Computers are now seeing, thinking and understanding.
Despite this unprecedented capability, our experience remains shaped by traditional products and interfaces.
Two years ago, Jony Ive and the creative collective LoveFrom, quietly began collaborating with Sam Altman and the team at OpenAI.
A collaboration built upon friendship, curiosity and shared values quickly grew in ambition. Tentative ideas and explorations evolved into tangible designs.
The ideas seemed important and useful. They were optimistic and hopeful. They were inspiring. They made everyone smile. They reminded us of a time when we celebrated human achievement, grateful for new tools that helped us learn, explore and create.
It became clear that our ambitions to develop, engineer and manufacture a new family of products demanded an entirely new company. And so, one year ago, Jony founded io with Scott Cannon, Evans Hankey and Tang Tan.
We gathered together the best hardware and software engineers, the best technologists, physicists, scientists, researchers and experts in product development and manufacturing. Many of us have worked closely for decades.
The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco.
As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io.
We could not possibly be more excited.
Sam & Jony
The mechanics of the Ive-OpenAI deal are slightly convoluted. At its core, OpenAI will acquire Ive’s company “io” in an all-equity deal valued at $6.5 billion—Ive founded io last year to design and develop AI-powered products. Meanwhile, io’s staff of approximately 55 engineers, scientists, researchers, physicists, and product development specialists will become part of OpenAI.
Meanwhile, Ive’s design firm LoveFrom will continue to operate independently, with OpenAI becoming a customer of LoveFrom, while LoveFrom will receive a stake in OpenAI. The companies expect the transaction to close this summer pending regulatory approval.
In some ways, the deal is no big surprise. Ive’s design firm and Altman have been working on a new device for two years that aims to create an AI-focused consumer electronics device. The collaboration reportedly focuses on creating devices that will reduce screen time, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. The project has so far experimented with options including headphones and devices with cameras.
While Ive made his reputation designing physical products at Apple, he also took on more software responsibilities toward the end of his tenure. At OpenAI, his work will extend across future versions of ChatGPT, audio features, apps, and other products.
A big part of marketing the deal has focused on the reported friendship between Altman and Ive. In a statement published on OpenAI’s website, Altman said he hopes the team-up can “bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago.” (Altman once told Ars Technica that his first computer was a Macintosh LC II, introduced in 1992.)
The former Apple designer shared a similar sentiment that reached into his long and storied history as an industrial designer. “I have a growing sense that everything I have learned over the last 30 years has led me to this moment,” said Ive.
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