Jony Ive confirms he’s working with Sam Altman on a secret undertaking

Rumors emerged final yr of a collaboration between former Apple designer Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, however the two have till now stored quiet about it. In a profile by that was printed this weekend, although, Ive confirms his firm LoveFrom is main the design on an AI product being constructed with Altman. Additionally on board are Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, each of whom held huge design roles at Apple.

There’s up to now a group of about 10 staff concerned with the undertaking, based mostly in a San Francisco workplace constructing that’s considered one of a number of properties Ive has bought on a single metropolis block, in accordance with the Instances. However we nonetheless don’t know a lot in regards to the product they’re engaged on. The report describes Tan and Hankey wheeling chairs between the LoveFrom properties that have been “topped by papers and cardboard packing containers with the earliest concepts for a product that makes use of A.I. to create a computing expertise that’s much less socially disruptive than the iPhone.”

Since Ive left Apple in 2019 to begin LoveFrom, the design agency has labored on and even , however we haven’t seen a lot in the best way of {hardware} — simply . Whereas an AI product appears to be on the horizon, there’s at the moment no timeline for when it’ll make its debut.