Stuffing an AI chatbot into a consumer electronics device and providing people with the product they actually want has proven extremely difficult.
We’ve seen creepy and widely hated pendants designed to listen to everything you say, as well as flawed AI “pins” that became a blazing dumpster fire, causing frustration and distrust.
Now Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which recruited former Apple design lead Jony Ive to lead its own hardware effort, is getting ready to release its potential showstopper — and alas, it doesn’t look like it’s managed to move beyond “the cluttered gadget that’s already in your phone.”
As Information reportsA team of over 200 employees is working on a smart speaker with a built-in camera that will recognize faces and identify objects thanks to a dose of AI. It will reportedly retail anywhere between $200 and $300 and won’t ship before early next year.
That’s right: The best idea the big minds at OpenAI can come up with is yet another “home gadget that talks to you” – without a single discernible distinguishing feature from the phone already in your pocket, which can already run every major chatbot.
The company is also reportedly working on a “smart lamp” – but whether OpenAI is actually considering bringing it to market, let alone whether such a product could generate any excitement among consumers, is unclear.
This marks a turning point for OpenAI as it continues to explore potential revenue streams to prevent billions of dollars in losses per quarter. The company is already turning to ads to bring in some much-needed revenue, despite Altman previously describing them as a “last resort.”
Even just bringing a smart speaker to market can be difficult. In October, financial Times informed OpenAI’s partnership with Ive was experiencing “technical issues”, causing the release date of the first product to be delayed from last year to this year. Considering the latest news, the company may continue to face problems as the release date continues to move forward.
Other efforts at AI hardware have struggled to achieve much speed, even with significant resources. Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa, which launched last year in a barely half-functional state, hasn’t really moved the needle.
Apart from technical hurdles, OpenAI will have to tread carefully when it comes to user privacy. Marketing a tool designed to ingest and analyze large amounts of potentially intimate data is not straightforward.
Consumers are already becoming wary of AI, fearing it is ushering in a new era of surveillance. Case in point, Amazon’s home security subsidiary Ring completely missed the mark with its Super Bowl ad earlier this month, which showed off a new function that lets its security camera feed scan an entire neighborhood.
Netizens criticized the ad as “Orwellian”, which impressed some customers. allegedly disconnect and destroy Their Ring cameras.
How users will react to the OpenAI smart speaker remains to be seen. But given the many missed attempts we’ve come across so far, the company has a lot to prove.
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