It’s “the coolest piece of technology the world has ever seen.” It’s going to “completely reimagine what it means to use a computer.” It’s the “beginning of the greatest technological revolution in our lifetimes.”
It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
In one of the more head-scratching branding exercises in recent Silicon Valley history, OpenAI on Thursday dropped a nine-minute video of CEO Sam Altman and former Apple designer Jony Ive strolling the streets of San Francisco, settling onto a couple of stools in a macchiato bar, and chatting amiably — one might even say bromantically — about how much they admire one another.
Also, how the new mystery gizmo they’re building together — whatever the hell it might be — will change the course of human evolution.
Not surprisingly, the internet had a field day. “How is this not satire?” one viewer asked. “I’ll be happy if whatever product they create saves me the 9:21 minutes I lost watching this,” posted another. Some mocked the overly polished production (“ChatGPT glazes too much”), others zoomed in on Ive’s awkward gait (“Is Jony new to walking?”), and a whole lot of folks focused on the gushing endearments between the two tech bros. One San Francisco outlet nailed it as an “engagement-party-style sizzle reel.”
But while the video says nothing about the actual device, it’s not entirely unilluminating — if you know the cast of characters.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim (the An Inconvenient Truth guy), the video was produced with backing from Laurene Powell Jobs, who helped launch Guggenheim’s Concordia Studio and also backed Ive’s hardware startup OI, which Open AI just acquired in a $6.5 billion share-swap deal, a massive bet on a company that has yet to unveil a single prototype.
All of these factors make this video more than just a teaser — it’s a coalition. Steve Jobs’ widow, the guy most eager to be the next Steve Jobs (Altman), and one of Jobs’ closest design collaborators (Ive) teaming up to take on Jobs’ old company — and beat it at its own game, not just by building a shiny new gadget, but by presumably laying the first brick in an Apple-style “family” of AI-native devices, engineered to sync, to talk, to maybe even finish your sentences.
So what is Altman and Ive’s new earth-shaking product, exactly? We still don’t know. Not the name, not the form, not even a silhouette. Just the word “device” — repeated like a mantra — and the promise that it will somehow make us feel more “present.”
What we’re left with, for now, is nine minutes of reverent stares, ambient piano, and two men on stools telling us that a revolution is coming — while carefully showing us absolutely nothing.
