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There's a fear in investing when a sector swells rapidly. Booming stock prices and aggressive spending feel great, until things inevitably cool off. Then comes the reckoning: Who overdid it in irreversible ways?

Big Tech is in an AI arms race, each company trying to outspend the others on data centers, GPUs, networking gear, and talent. Engineers can be let go. But the infrastructure? That's permanent. If the AGI dream fades, you're stuck with massive, costly assets.

So when Google announced it would hike capex by $10 billion to $85 billion in 2025 eyebrows went up. Most of it is for things you can't walk back: chips, data centers, and networking.

Google is "jumping aboard the AI crazy train," Bernstein Research analyst Mark Shmulik wrote, referencing a song by the late bat biter Ozzy Osbourne.

Meta's Mark Zuckerberg brags about Manhattan-sized data centers. And Elon Musk keeps hoarding GPUs. While Sam Altman is building mega-data centers with partners. JPMorgan dubbed this "vibe spending," warning OpenAI might burn $46 billion in four years.

It's no shock when Elon, Zuck, and Sam flex on capex. But Google? That's surprising. "Google doesn't do this," Shmulik said. The company has been viewed as measured in recent years, prioritizing investment intensity with care. Not anymore.

Now investors want to know: Will these swelling bets pay off?

There are promising signs. Since May, Google's monthly token processing (the currency of generative AI) has doubled from 480 trillion to nearly a quadrillion. Search grew 12% in Q2, beating forecasts. Cloud sales surged 32%. CEO Sundar Pichai said Google is ramping up capex to support all this growth.

But it's still a huge gamble. "Does the current return on invested capital seen in both Search and Cloud hold up at higher [capex] intensity levels," Shmulik asked, "or is the spend a very expensive piece of gum trying to plug an AI-sized hole?" He leans optimistic.

Still, Google shares rose just 1% after these results. Not exactly a resounding endorsement.

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• Sam Altman said that some young people "rely on ChatGPT too much."
• At a Federal Reserve banking event this week, Altman said that young people felt AI knew them and their friends well.
• "Something about collectively deciding we're going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous," he said.

Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks people should cool it with how much they're relying on ChatGPT for decision-making.

Altman said there was a worrying amount of "emotional over-reliance" on ChatGPT, especially among young people, when speaking at a banking conference hosted by the Federal Reserve this week.

"People rely on ChatGPT too much," Altman said. "There's young people who say things like, 'I can't make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that's going on. It knows me, it knows my friends. I'm gonna do whatever it says.' That feels really bad to me."

Altman said that over-reliance on ChatGPT for decision-making was "a really common thing with young people."

Young people are increasingly using AI chatbots and companions in their daily life.

72% of teens have used an AI companion, according to a Common Sense Media report. Half of those surveyed said they trusted their companion's advice at least "somewhat."

Younger kids appear to be more trusting of AI companions, according to the survey — with 27% of the respondents ages 13-14 saying they trusted the technology somewhat compared to 20% of respondents aged 15-17. Within the group that said they trust their AI companions, 23% said they trust them "quite a bit" or "completely."

Speaking about his concerns of over-reliance on AI at the conference, Altman said that OpenAI was "trying to understand what to do about it."

"Even if ChatGPT gives great advice, even if ChatGPT gives way better advice than any human therapist, something about collectively deciding we're going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous," Altman said.

• The sharks are circling OpenAI.
• The world's premier AI startup is facing a multi-front attack from Google, Meta, Amazon, and others.
• Here's everything you need to know about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's rough summer.

It's been a rough few months at OpenAI.

At the end of March, the premier AI startup was collecting superlatives. It had just secured another $40 billion in funding, the largest private tech deal ever. That valued the company at $300 billion, which is the highest of any startup on the planet. Its flagship product, ChatGPT, was attracting some 500 million users a week, far more than its closest competitor.

All seemed to be going great for OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who, on top of it all, welcomed his first child a month earlier.

Then the sharks started circling.

In the last several weeks, OpenAI has faced attacks on multiple fronts, mostly from Big Tech behemoths like Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft. Smaller companies, too, smelled blood in the water. And rival chatbot makers, like xAI, have released buzzy new models, putting pressure on OpenAI to rush its own update.

OpenAI engineers, some of whom told media outlets they've been working 80 hours a week or more, faced burnout. The company gave them all a week off to recover earlier this month.

It's lonely at the top, as they say. Here's what the siege of OpenAI looks like.

Meta poaches OpenAI staffers

It seems a top AI engineer is the new superstar athlete.

During a June episode of the "Uncapped with Jack Altman" podcast, Jack's brother Sam said Mark Zuckerberg's Meta tried to poach OpenAI's staffers with "giant signing offers."

Altman said Meta offered "$100 million signing bonuses," which he called "crazy."

"I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor, and I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped," Altman said.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth later told CNBC that Altman "neglected to mention that he's countering those offers."

A week later, Meta had poached three top OpenAI researchers. One of them said on X that he was not offered a $100 million signing bonus, calling it "fake news."

Retaining top talent is a necessity to compete in the AI race (Meta's Llama has had its own struggles), and some prominent investors, like Reid Hoffman, say paying huge signing bonuses makes sense.

OpenAI itself has poached talent from xAI and Tesla in recent weeks, Wired reported, and Altman brushed off Meta's poaching on the sidelines of the Sun Valley conference earlier this month.

"We have, obviously, an incredibly talented team, and I think they really love what they are doing. Obviously, some people will go to different places," Altman told reporters.

OpenAI's deal with Windsurf falls through

OpenAI took another hit this summer when its deal with Windsurf, the AI coding assistant startup, collapsed. OpenAI had agreed to purchase Windsurf for about $3 billion, Bloomberg reported.

By June, however, tensions were rising between OpenAI and Microsoft. The tech giant is OpenAI's biggest investor, and it considers Windsurf a direct competitor of Microsoft Copilot.

Microsoft's current deal with OpenAI would give it access to Windsurf's intellectual property, which neither OpenAI nor Windsurf wants, a person with knowledge of the talks told BI.

On Friday, OpenAI told BI that its deal with Windsurf had fallen through. Instead, Windsurf CEO Varun Mohan and some other Windsurf employees would join Google DeepMind.

"We're excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf's team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding," Google's spokesperson told BI. "We're excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere."

Tensions with Microsoft

The failed Windsurf deal was just another in a string of disagreements that have fueled tension between OpenAI and its largest investor.

The deal between OpenAI and Microsoft is unsurprisingly complex. At the heart of the dispute is revenue splits and equity, of course, but also the very definition of artificial general intelligence. AGI is broadly considered AI that matches or surpasses human intelligence, but in terms of the deal between OpenAI and Microsoft, AGI is defined as $100 billion in profit.

That's a lot of potential revenue.

Under the deal, once OpenAI reaches that benchmark, Microsoft loses its share of OpenAI's revenue. Microsoft would understandably like to revise that line.

As BI's Charles Rollet wrote earlier this month, the tension is made worse by the fact that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella isn't as sold on AGI's transformative power as all the people developing it at OpenAI. He also doesn't think it's coming anytime soon. He called AGI "nonsensical benchmark hacking" on a podcast earlier this year.

OpenAI delays release of new model

Back in simpler times, at the end of March, as Altman was basking in the glow of the world's most valuable startup, he said the newly secured funding would allow OpenAI to "push the frontiers of AI research even further."

He then announced that OpenAI was close to rolling out its first open-weight language model with advanced reasoning capabilities since GPT-2 in 2019.

On Friday evening, generally a good time to unveil bad news, Altman soberly told the world that OpenAI's new model would be delayed — again.

"We need time to run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas," Altman said on X. "We are not yet sure how long it will take us."

He then apologized and assured everyone that "we are working super hard!"

It marked the second delay in a month, pushing the timeline indefinitely beyond earlier promises of a June launch.

Open-weight AI models offer a middle ground between open-source and proprietary systems by sharing only the pre-trained parameters of a neural network but not the actual source code. OpenAI products, unlike some of its competitors, like Meta's Llama and the Chinese AI chatbot, DeepSeek, and despite the company's name, are not open source.

The new model's delay comes days after Elon Musk's xAI launched a major update to its chatbot, Grok. While that update came with some significant trouble, forcing xAI to ultimately apologize, the chatbot boasts advancements in vision and voice that are resonating with users.

Iyo sues IO

In May, OpenAI announced a partnership with io, the design company founded by the famous former Apple design chief Jony Ive. Together, the two stars would develop future AI consumer devices.

The deal was valued at about $6.5 billion. The announcement included a photo shoot of the two men that wouldn't have been out of place in a Vogue spread and a highly produced video in which Altman and Ive sit and chat in a wine bar drinking espresso.

A month later, OpenAI removed all mentions of the collaboration from its platforms. Another company, iyO, a Google spinoff, had filed a trademark complaint. The names io and iyO were too similar, the suit says, and by all accounts, the new io collaboration would be developing products similar to ones iyO had planned.

US District Judge Trina Thompson ruled that iyO's case is strong enough to move to a hearing this fall. She ordered Altman, Ive, and OpenAI not to use the io brand and take down mentions of the name.

OpenAI denied the claims and said it was reviewing its legal options.

OpenAI announced on July 9 that, despite the lawsuit, it had completed the deal to acquire io and posted a statement on its website.

"We're thrilled to share that the io Products, Inc. team has officially merged with OpenAI. Jony Ive and LoveFrom remain independent and have assumed deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI," the statement said.

Amazon is making a movie about Altman

The coming film, "Artificial," produced by Amazon Studios, is all about Altman.

And it's not a wholly flattering account, said Matt Belloni, a reporter at Puck who said he has seen a recent draft of the script.

Belloni said the drama recounts the period in 2023 when Altman was fired and then rehired as CEO. It also follows OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, who was also at the center of that drama and who left the company months later.

At the heart of the tension over those few days was a disagreement between Altman and some top OpenAI execs over the company's commitment to its mission to develop AGI safely.

A string of engineers working on alignment, an AI industry term for ensuring the tech is developed safely, left the company after Altman's reappointment (Microsoft, incidentally, played a key role in helping Altman survive). While many OpenAI employees rallied around Altman, others described him to the press at that time as "manipulative."

Belloni reported that the film has parallels to "The Social Network," the 2010 biographical drama about Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

That film gained critical acclaim and likely damaged Zuckerberg's public persona. Zuckerberg called "The Social Network" inaccurate and "hurtful."

According to Belloni, the version of the script he read depicts Altman as a "master schemer" and a liar.

OpenAI won't go down without a fight

Despite all the competition, OpenAI is still the leader in the space and is making its own moves that will likely worry rivals.

It is planning to launch a new AI-powered web browser, for instance, that could compete with Google Chrome, the current industry leader. The browser will embed ChatGPT and feature an AI agent that can handle tasks like booking reservations and filling out forms.

It also secured a $200 million contract to provide AI support to the US military. OpenAI will help develop capabilities to "address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains," the Pentagon said in June. OpenAI earlier partnered with Palmer Luckey's defense tech firm, Anduril.

OpenAI is also forming more playful partnerships. Last month, Mattel announced it was working with OpenAI to bring AI to its iconic doll, Barbie.

By using OpenAI's technology, Mattel will "bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences with an emphasis on innovation, privacy, and safety," the California-based toy manufacturer said in a press.

Altman, for his part, is at least publicly optimistic.

"I have never seen growth in any company, one that I've been involved with or not, like this," Altman said at a TED conference in Vancouver in April. "The growth of ChatGPT — it is really fun. I feel deeply honored. But it is crazy to live through."

• As the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman is frequently asked for his predictions about how AI will change our world.
• He has thoughts on where we're headed on AGI, superintelligence, agentic AI, and more.
• Here are some of his predictions about the future of AI.

Over the years, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shared predictions about where he thinks we're headed on artificial general intelligence, superintelligence, agentic AI, and more — and when we might get there.

There are some common themes.

He thinks AGI — which ChatGPT maker OpenAI defines as "AI systems that are generally smarter than humans" — will enhance productivity by taking care of menial tasks to free up people for more abstract work and decision-making.

He also believes it'll create "shared intelligence," he said in a May 2024 interview at Harvard Business School, and that it'll usher in "massive prosperity," he forecast in a 2024 blog post.

One day, everyone will have "a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine," Altman wrote in his 2024 blog.

"AI models will soon serve as autonomous personal assistants who carry out specific tasks on our behalf like coordinating medical care on your behalf. At some point further down the road, AI systems are going to get so good that they help us make better next-generation systems and make scientific progress across the board," he added.

As far as timelines go, Altman wrote in a January 2025 blog post that he thinks this year "we may see the first AI agents 'join the workforce' and materially change the output of companies."

He said in December at The New York Times' DealBook Summit he thinks we'll achieve AGI "sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less."

"We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it," he added in his January post.

Beyond AGI, the company is also turning its attention to superintelligence, which it defines as "future AI systems dramatically more capable than even AGI."

"Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity," he wrote in his blog post earlier this year.

Altman talked about AI funding in a February 2025 blog post.

He said the cost of using a given AI drops by roughly 10 times every year and that there's "no reason for exponentially increasing investment to stop in the near future" since, as he puts it, "the socioeconomic value of linearly increasing intelligence is super-exponential."

"If we don't build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people," he wrote last year. He cited the need to drive down the cost of compute, as well as the massive demand for enough chips and energy to power AI.

While Altman thinks AI will drive down the price of many goods in the future, he believes "the price of luxury goods and a few inherently limited resources like land may rise even more dramatically," he wrote in February.

Then there's the potential repercussions for people's jobs.

"Most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we'll run out of things to do (even if they don't look like "real jobs" to us today)," he wrote in his 2024 blog post.

At the same time, he acknowledged in 2023 that many people will lose their jobs in the process.

"A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good, it's only going to be a supplement, no one is ever going to be replaced," he said. "Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop."

While he believes "trending more towards individual empowerment" with AGI is important, he noted in his February blog post that "the other likely path we can see is AI being used by authoritarian governments to control their population through mass surveillance and loss of autonomy."

And his bleakest statement on AI yet: That the worst-case scenario is "lights out for all of us," he said in a 2023 interview.

To that end, Altman has spoken about the need for guardrails to ensure responsible AI development.

"I think it's like impossible to overstate the importance of AI safety and alignment work. I would like to see much, much more happening," he said in the 2023 interview.

"The world will not change all at once; it never does," he wrote in his February blog post. "But the future will be coming at us in a way that is impossible to ignore, and the long-term changes to our society and economy will be huge. We will find new things to do, new ways to be useful to each other, and new ways to compete, but they may not look very much like the jobs of today."

In fact, the jobs of tomorrow, Altman believes, will be "sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective."

"Like, podcast bro was not a real job not that long ago, and you figured out how to monetize it and you're doing great and we're all happy for you," Altman joked to his brother Jack Altman during an interview on his "Uncapped" podcast. "But would the subsistence farmer look at this as a job or as like you playing a game to entertain yourself?"

• OpenAI and Jony Ive's io is developing a new AI-powered device.
• The mystery device doesn't go in your ear and it isn't wearable, io cofounder said in legal filings.
• OpenAI acquired io for $6.5 billion last month.

Thanks to new court documents, we now know more about the secretive device OpenAI is working on with Jony Ive, the man behind the iPhone's design.

Tang Tan, the cofounder and hardware chief of Ive's io, revealed new details about the AI-powered device in legal filings submitted for a trademark lawsuit.

"Its design is not yet finalized, but it is not an in-ear device, nor a wearable device," Tan said.

The mystery device has been the subject of widespread speculation throughout the tech industry and beyond. Some guesses include a companion device for smartphones or computers, something wearable or screenless, and a minimalist gadget the size of an iPod.

Tan scratched one of those off the list with his wearable remark in the trademark infringement lawsuit filed by iyO, a startup out of Google's moonshot factory, X. The plaintiff is working on an earpiece that connects to other devices.

Over the past month, OpenAI's cofounder Sam Altman has dropped clues about the mystery hardware's form. He's made it clear that it's not a smartphone or smart glasses and has described it as a companion.

Altman told his brother Jack Altman on the "Uncapped" podcast last week that it should feel like a thing that helps you "get done whatever you want to get done." It will go beyond the "constraints" of computers and smartphones that aren't powered by AI, he said.

"We don't quite have a word for it. 'My AI companion' is the best I can do right now," Altman said.

In May, Altman and Ive said that OpenAI had bought io for $6.5 billion. Ive's design firm, LoveFrom, had worked with Altman for two years before the io purchase.

The timeline for production and distribution of this device is still unknown, but Tan said in the documents that there are no plans to advertise or sell it "for at least a year."

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Business Insider.

• Telegram CEO Pavel Durov said he and Elon Musk are "very different," and that Musk can be "emotional."
• Durov also revealed what he sees as Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg's defining qualities and flaws.
• The Telegram leader also questioned whether ChatGPT will be able to stay ahead in the AI race.

Telegram cofounder and CEO Pavel Durov offered a quick personality assessment of some of his biggest tech rivals in a recent interview, calling Elon Musk "very emotional" and saying Sam Altman may not have the technical chops.

Durov, who was arrested last year after French authorities accused him of being complicit in letting criminal activity thrive on Telegram, pushed against the comparison some make between himself and Musk.

"We are very different. Elon runs several companies at once, while I only run one," he told the French outlet Le Point. "Elon can be very emotional, while I try to think deeply before acting." He added that Musk's perceived weaknesses, however, could also contribute to his strengths.

Both men have fathered many children — Musk has at least 11 known kids, and Durov told Le Point that he has more than 100 through sperm donation. All of them, Durov said, will get a sliver of his billions (he's worth nearly $14 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index).

When asked about Mark Zuckerberg's qualities and flaws, Durov said the Meta CEO "adapts well and quickly follows trends, but he seems to lack fundamental values that he would remain faithful to, regardless of changes in political climate or fashion in the tech sector."

Zuckerberg has made notable changes at Meta in recent months and since President Donald Trump came back into office, including ending diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and third-party fact-checking. Durov has recently criticized the Meta-owned rival WhatsApp, calling it a "cheap, watered-down imitation of Telegram." A spokesperson for WhatsApp previously told BI that the app was "born with privacy in our DNA long before Telegram came along."

In terms of Altman's qualities and flaws, Durov praised his social skills, saying they've allowed him to make crucial alliances related to ChatGPT.

"But some wonder if his technical expertise is still sufficient, now that his co-founder Ilya and many other scientists have left OpenAI," Durov said, referring to the company's co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever. He added that it will "be interesting" to track whether ChatGPT can stay ahead in the competitive world of AI chatbots.

Representatives for Musk, Zuckerberg, and Altman did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• The "Godfather of AI" outlined why he thinks Google moved slower on rolling out its chatbots.
• Geoffrey Hinton, who spent more than a decade at Google, said reputational considerations were key.
• Hinton, who focuses on AI safety, said he couldn't comment on if Sam Altman has a "good moral compass."

When it comes to winning the AI race, the "Godfather of AI" thinks there's an advantage in having nothing to lose.

On an episode of the "Diary of a CEO" podcast that aired June 16, Geoffrey Hinton laid out what he sees as a key difference between how OpenAI and Google, his former employer, dealt with AI safety.

"When they had these big chatbots, they didn't release them, possibly because they were worried about their reputation," Hinton said of Google. "They had a very good reputation, and they didn't want to damage it."

Google released Bard, its AI chatbot, in March of 2023, before later incorporating it into its larger suite of large language models called Gemini. The company was playing catch-up, though, since OpenAI released ChatGPT at the end of 2022.

Hinton, who earned his nickname for his pioneering work on neural networks, laid out a key reason that OpenAI could move faster on the podcast episode: "OpenAI didn't have a reputation, and so they could afford to take the gamble."

Talking at an all-hands meeting shortly after ChatGPT came out, Google's then-head of AI said the company didn't plan to immediately release a chatbot because of "reputational risk," adding that it needed to make choices "more conservatively than a small startup," CNBC reported at the time.

The company's AI boss, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, said in February of this year that AI poses potential long-term risks, and that agentic systems could get "out of control." He advocated having a governing body that regulates AI projects.

Gemini has made some high-profile mistakes since its launch, and showed bias in its written responses and image-generating feature. Google CEO Sundar Pichai addressed the controversy in a memo to staff last year, saying the company "got it wrong" and pledging to make changes.

The "Godfather" saw Google's early chatbot decision-making from the inside — he spent more than a decade at the company before quitting to talk more freely about what he describes as the dangers of AI. On Monday's podcast episode, though, Hinton said he didn't face internal pressure to stay silent.

"Google encouraged me to stay and work on AI safety, and said I could do whatever I liked on AI safety," he said. "You kind of censor yourself. If you work for a big company, you don't feel right saying things that will damage the big company."

Overall, Hinton said he thinks Google "actually behaved very responsibly."

Hinton couldn't be as sure about OpenAI, though he has never worked at the company. When asked whether the company's CEO, Sam Altman, has a "good moral compass" earlier in the episode, he said, "We'll see." He added that he doesn't know Altman personally, so he didn't want to comment further.

OpenAI has faced criticism in recent months for approaching safety differently than in the past. In a recent blog post, the company said it would only change its safety requirements after making sure it wouldn't "meaningfully increase the overall risk of severe harm." Its focus areas for safety now include cybersecurity, chemical threats, and AI's power to improve independently.

Altman defended OpenAI's approach to safety in an interview at TED2025 in April, saying that the company's preparedness framework outlines "where we think the most important danger moments are." Altman also acknowledged in the interview that OpenAI has loosened some restrictions on its model's behavior based on user feedback about censorship.

The earlier competition between OpenAI and Google to release initial chatbots was fierce, and the AI talent race is only heating up. Documents reviewed by Business Insider reveal that Google relied on ChatGPT in 2023 — during its attempts to catch up to ChatGPT.

Representatives for Google and OpenAI did not respond to BI's request for comment.

• Former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are building a mystery ChatGPT device.
• The interwebs have come alive with gadget guesses, renders, and memes.
• OpenAI is trying to challenge Apple and Google by redefining AI interaction with new hardware.

Let's get something out of the way first: very few people really know what former Apple design chief Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are building.

That hasn't stopped the internet from bursting at the seams with wild guesses, gorgeous renders, speculative hot takes, and a healthy dose of meme-fueled imagination.

So, what is this mystery device that Ive is cooking up for OpenAI's ChatGPT? A screenless wearable? A next-gen smart assistant? A pocketable AI oracle? A glorified paperweight?

Here's our roundup of the best guesses — serious, speculative, satirical, and everything in between. Thank you to my Business Insider colleagues for contributing to this Friday's fun.

Serious Guesses: Industry Analyst Weighs In

OK fine. We'll start with some serious ideas.

TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is a credible source in the tech hardware and supply-chain space, especially when it comes to Apple. His take on the Ive-OpenAI gadget is valuable:

• Form Factor: Think small. Maybe iPod Shuffle-sized. Portable, minimal, and delightfully Ive-ish.
• Wearable: One of the use cases includes wearing it around your neck. Shades of sci-fi, Star Trek, or perhaps a Tamagotchi on steroids?
• No Screen: It will have cameras and mics for environmental awareness but no display. The idea is to not add another screen to our lives.
• Companion Device: It will connect to your smartphone or laptop for processing and visual output.
• Production Timeline: Mass production is expected in 2027, giving us plenty of time for more leaks, renders, and conspiracy theories.

Kuo suggested on X that the announcement was timed to shift attention away from Google I/O. OpenAI positioned this as a new hardware-software narrative, riding the trend of "physical AI."

He also referenced a great quote from former Apple fellow Alan Kay: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." That's exactly what Altman and OpenAI are trying to do here.

Clues from Altman and WSJ

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Altman offered OpenAI staff a preview of the devices he's building with Ive:

• The device was described as an AI "companion." Altman wants to ship 100 million of them on day one.
• It will be aware of its surroundings and fit in your pocket or sit on your desk.
• It's not a phone or smart glasses. Ive reportedly wasn't keen on a wearable, though the final design may still flirt with that concept.
• Altman said the device should be the third major object on your desk, alongside a MacBook and iPhone.
• There will be a "family of devices," and Altman even floated the idea of mailing subscribers new ChatGPT-powered computers.

They aim to shift away from screen-based interaction and rethink what AI companionship really means in a day-to-day human context.

Renders, memes, and vibes

The brilliant designer Ben Geskin imagined several cool form factors on X, including this circular disc.

Geskin's ideas blend Apple-grade minimalism with futuristic whimsy, perfectly on brand for Jony Ive.

• Some smart glasses, because of course.
• A dangly dongle, equal parts techie and jewelry.
• Square/rectangular objects with eerie elegance.

Echoing Geskin, another user on X proposed a disc-shaped device, sleek enough to pass as a high-end coaster or futuristic hockey puck. Think of it as an AI desk companion, quietly listening and gently glowing.

One BI colleague mentioned a smart ChatGPT lamp, possibly inspired by "The Sopranos" episode where the FBI bugs Tony's basement. Funny, but not impossible. After all, a lamp fits Altman's desk-friendly criteria.

Another X user joked that the device could resemble those emergency pendants worn by older adults — "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!" — but with ChatGPT instead of a nurse. A brutal meme, but it raises a valid point: If the device is meant to be always-on, context-aware, and worn, why not market it to older users, too?

Although, if this is for the olds, should it use Google Gemini instead? Burn!

X user Peter Hu proposed an AI-powered nail clipper. Yes, it's absurd, and no, it doesn't make sense. But the design? Low-key fire.

Here's mocked up a vape pen with a ChatGPT twist. Inhale wisdom, exhale existential dread.

Some of the most surreal concepts look like direct plugs into your skull. There's a "Matrix" or "Severance" vibe here, suggesting a future where ChatGPT lives in your head like a helpful parasite.

This one below is cute!

I asked ChatGPT to take a guess. The answer was not impressive. No wonder OpenAI paid $6.5 billion for Ive's hardware design startup.

This last one is a Silicon Valley insider joke. It's also a warning that it's extremely hard to replace smartphones as the go-to tech gadget. It's a riff on the Humane pin, an AI device that bombed already.

Can OpenAI compete with Apple and Google?

This device matters beyond its shape because of what it represents. Right now, Apple and Google dominate the interface layer of computing through iOS and Android devices. If OpenAI wants to define how people interact with ChatGPT, it needs a hardware beachhead.

Humane's AI pin tried and failed. The Rabbit R1 got roasted. The jury's still out on Meta's Ray-Bans. Can Ive and Altman actually crack the code?

Knowing Ive, we'll probably be surprised no matter what. The real product could be something no one predicted.

The race to define the next major computing interface is officially on. With Ive and Altman teaming up, OpenAI is making a major bet that how we interact with AI is just as important as what AI can do.

When the curtain lifts, and Ive whispers "aluminium" in a design video, jaws will probably drop, and competitors will scramble.

Until then, keep your renders weird, your guesses wild, and your brain tuned in to BI. We'll be here to cover every hilarious, ambitious, and brilliant twist along the way.

See you in 2027.

• Before OpenAI, Altman was well-known in Silicon Valley as the president of Y Combinator.
• The release of ChatGPT in 2022 catapulted Altman to worldwide fame.
• Since then, he's led the charge to make OpenAI the first company to unleash the power of AGI.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had an eventful 2024, and 2025 is shaping up to be just as big.

While the 39-year-old entrepreneur has been a household name in Silicon Valley for years now, the rest of the world has gotten to know him more recently through the success of OpenAI's AI chatbot, ChatGPT, which launched in 2022.

So far this year, Altman has tried to transform OpenAI into a for-profit company before backtracking in light of a lawsuit filed by OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk, while releasing the company's first "emotionally intelligent" model GPT-4.5, and planning for GPT-5.

Altman also unveiled a new partnership with longtime Apple designer Jony Ive, who, with his design firm LoveFrom, will take creative and design control of OpenAI. OpenAI is also acquiring Ive's hardware startup in a $6.5 billion deal.

This year also marked major milestones in Altman's personal life. Altman, who's married to Oliver Mulherin, announced the birth of his son in February.

In April 2024, Altman was added to Forbes' billionaires list. OpenAI launched GPT-4o — its newest large language model —the following month. In June, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference that the tech giant would partner with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to iPhones.

Before the AI boom, Altman spent years as president of startup accelerator Y Combinator. He also owns stakes in Reddit, a nuclear fusion startup known as Helion, and other companies. In his free time, he races sports cars with his husband and preps for the apocalypse.

Here's a look at Altman's life and career so far.

Altman grew up in St. Louis and he was a computer whiz from a young age.

He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, nonsectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.

 

 

Altman told The New Yorker that having a Mac helped him with his sexuality

"Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."

Altman came out as gay after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality.

"What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor, Madelyn Gray, told The New Yorker. "It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world."

Altman studied computer science at Stanford University before dropping out to start an app

The app shared a user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup got $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same batch as Reddit, according to The Business of Business.

Loopt eventually reached a $175 million valuation

The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.

One of Loopt's cofounders, Nick Sivo, and Altman dated for nine years, but they broke up after they sold the company.

After Loopt, Altman founded a venture fund called Hydrazine Capital, and raised $21 million.

That included a large part of the $5 million he got from Loopt, and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money into YC companies and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.

He told The New Yorker, "You want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts, the company will be hugely underpriced."

In 2014, at the age of 28, Altman was chosen by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham to succeed him as president of the startup accelerator.

While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup." The next year, at 29, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital.

After he became YC president, he wanted to let more science and engineering startups into each batch.

He chose a fission and a fusion startup for YC because he wanted to start a nuclear-energy company of his own. He invested his own money in both companies and served on their boards.

Mark Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, told The New Yorker, "Under Sam, the level of YC's ambition has gone up 10x."

 

He finds interesting — and expensive — ways to spend his free time.

In April (the same month he made Forbes' billionaire list), Altman was spotted in Napa, California, driving an ultra-rare Swedish supercar. The Koenigsegg Regera is seriously fast, able to go from zero to 250 miles per hour in less than 30 seconds. Only 80 of these cars are known to exist, and they can cost up to $4.65 million. 

He once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.

Separately, he told the founders of the startup Shypmate that, "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war.

"I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."

Altman's mom is a dermatologist and told The New Yorker, "Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He'll call and say he has a headache — and he'll have Googled it, so there's some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."

Altman has a brother, Jack, who is a cofounder and CEO at Lattice, an employee management platform.

Along with their brother Max, the Altmans launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.

In 2015, Altman cofounded OpenAI with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX at the time.

Their goal for the nonprofit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans.

"We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?" Musk told The New York Times in 2015. "We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity."

Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel.

Altman stepped down as YC president in March 2019 to focus on OpenAI. He stayed in a chairman role at the accelerator.

At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI planned to make a profit, and he said the "honest answer is we have no idea."

Altman said OpenAI had "never made any revenue" and that it had "no current plans to make revenue." 

"We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said at the time, according to TechCrunch.

Altman became CEO of OpenAI in May 2019 after it turned away from being a nonprofit company into a "capped profit" corporation.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said on its blog. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

OpenAI received a $1 billion investment from Microsoft in 2019.

Altman flew to Seattle to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he demonstrated OpenAI's AI models for him, The Wall Street Journal reported. The pair announced their business partnership on LinkedIn.

Current and former insiders at OpenAI told Fortune that after Altman took over as CEO, and after the investment from Microsoft, the company started focusing more on developing natural language processing.

Altman and OpenAI's former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities. 

In 2021, Altman and cofounders Alex Blania and Max Novendstern launched a global cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin.

The company, now just called World, aims to give everyone in the world access to crypto by scanning their iris with an orb. In January, World said it had reached 1 million people and has onboarded over 150,000 first-time crypto users.

Under Altman's tenure as CEO, OpenAI released popular generative AI tools to the public, including DALL-E and ChatGPT.

Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.

After ChatGPT was released on November 30, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days.

ChatGPT was made public so OpenAI could use feedback from users to improve the bot.

A few days after its launch, Altman said that it "is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness." Altman posted that ChatGPT was "great" for "fun creative inspiration," but "not such a good idea" to look up facts.

ChatGPT then launched a paid version of ChatGPT called "ChatGPT Professional" to give better access to the bot. In December, Altman posted that OpenAI "will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering."

ChatGPT now has multiple models at different price levels.

In January 2023, Microsoft announced it was making another "multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI.

The value of Microsoft's investment was worth $10 billion. Before Microsoft's investment, other venture capitalists wanted to buy shares from OpenAI employees in a tender offer that valued the company at around $29 billion.

Altman is still interested in nuclear fusion and invested $375 million in Helion Energy in 2022.

"Helion is more than an investment to me," Altman told TechCrunch. "It's the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I'm just super excited about what's going to happen there."

He told TechCrunch that he's "happy there's a fusion race," to build a low-cost fusion energy system that can eventually power the Earth.

OpenAI launched its subscription plan for ChatGPT Plus in 2023.

People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get benefits such as access to the app even when traffic is high, faster responses from the bot, and first access to new features and ChatGPT improvements.

Altman wrote that OpenAI's mission is to make sure AGI "benefits all of humanity."

"If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility," Altman wrote on OpenAI's blog.

Despite its potential, Altman said artificial general intelligence comes with "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption." But instead of stopping its development, Altman said "society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right."

Altman went on to share the principles that OpenAI "care about most," including "the benefits of, access to, and governance of AGI to be widely and fairly shared."

Altman said he and OpenAI are "a little bit scared" of AI's potential.

In an interview with ABC News, Altman said he thinks "people should be happy that we're a little bit scared" of generative AI systems as they develop.

Altman said he doesn't think AI systems should only be developed in a lab.

"You've got to get these products out into the world and make contact with reality, make our mistakes while the stakes are low," he said.

In April 2023, OpenAI announced the option to turn off chat history in ChatGPT.

In a blog post, the company said it hoped the option to turn off chat history "provides an easier way to manage your data than our existing opt-out process."

When a user turns off their chat history, new conversations will be kept for 30 days for OpenAI to review them for abuse, then are permanently deleted.

In his first appearance before Congress, Altman told a Senate panel there should be a government agency to grant licenses to companies working on advanced AI.

Altman told lawmakers there should be an agency that grants licenses for companies that are working on AI models "above a certain scale of capabilities." He also said the agency should be able to revoke licenses from companies that don't follow safety rules.

"I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," Altman said. "And we want to be vocal about that, we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

OpenAI launched a ChatGPT app for iPhones and Android users in 2023.

The app, which is free, can answer text-based and spoken questions using Whisper, another OpenAI product that is a speech-recognition model. Users who have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus can also access it through the app.

Altman met with leaders in Europe to discuss AI regulations and said OpenAI has "no plans to leave" the EU.

At the start of his trip, Altman told reporters in London that he was concerned about the EU's proposed AI Act, which focuses on regulating AI and protecting Europeans from AI risks.

"The details really matter," Altman said, according to the Financial Times. "We will try to comply, but if we can't comply, we will cease operating."

However, he shared on X later in the week that OpenAI is "excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave."

In an October 2023 interview, Altman expressed "deep misgivings" about people befriending AI.

Altman made it clear that he doesn't believe humans should try to be friends with AI in an interview during The Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event.

"I personally really have deep misgivings about this vision of the future where everyone is super close to AI friends, and not more so with their human friends," Altman said.

OpenAI shocked tech fans by announcing that Altman would no longer be the company's CEO.

In November, the OpenAI board of directors announced that Altman would be stepping down from his role as CEO and leaving the board, "effective immediately."

In a blog post, the board said it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," and added that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications."

"We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," a statement from OpenAI's board says. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

Altman issued his own statement via a post on X.

"i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people," Altman wrote.

He added: "will have more to say about what's next later."

Days after the ouster, Altman returned as CEO.

After a chaotic weekend, Altman and OpenAI announced that he would return to the tech company as CEO.

"We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo," the company wrote on X.

In January 2024, Altman confirmed he had married his partner Oliver Mulherin.

Altman married his partner Mulherin in January 2024.

An attendee of the wedding confirmed to Business Insider that the pictures the couple shared weren't AI-generated. His husband is an Australian software engineer who previously worked at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

OpenAI launched its text-to-video model Sora.

In February 2024, OpenAI unveiled Sora to the public. The program — named after the Japanese word for "sky" — created up to one-minute-long videos from text prompts. 

"We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," OpenAI wrote in Sora's announcement.

Altman and his husband signed the Giving Pledge in 2024.

A few weeks after Forbes declared Altman a billionaire, he and his partner signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of their fortune.

"We would not be making this pledge if it weren't for the hard work, brilliance, generosity, and dedication to improve the world of many people that built the scaffolding of society that let us get here," the pledge letter read.

They continued: "There is nothing we can do except feel immense gratitude and commit to pay it forward, and do what we can to build the scaffolding up a little higher."

OpenAI introduces GPT-4o.

During its "Spring Update" on May 13, 2024, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, an updated version of its large language model that powers ChatGPT. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati made the announcement, and Altman didn't make an appearance despite actively promoting the event on X. 

Altman might've been absent from the presentation, but the demonstrations of ChatGPT's voice and video capabilities created buzz online. It also led to Altman and his company being called out by actor Scarlett Johansson, who alleged that the OpenAI chatbot Sky's voice sounded "eerily similar" to her own after she declined a partnership.

Altman's post on X referencing a movie in which Johansson voices someone's virtual girlfriend was quickly called into question, and the company soon said that it would not move forward with the voice heard in the demo.

Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

After much debate about how it would enter the AI arms race, Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it would partner with OpenAI to close the gap between it and its rivals.

Although Bloomberg reported that Apple isn't paying OpenAI in cash, the tech titan's solid installed base of over two billion users means more people may use ChatGPT if it comes integrated with Siri. According to the presentation, Siri will be able to handle more complex requests with help from ChatGPT.

Altman was spotted attending WWDC the day the partnership was announced and speaking to high-ranking Apple employees ahead of the keynote. 

Altman might finally get equity as OpenAI considers restructuring.

Altman confirmed reports that OpenAI was planning a corporate restructuring during a talk at Italian Tech Week in September 2024. 

"Our board has been thinking about that for almost a year, independently, as we think about what it takes to get to our next stage," Altman said. "I think this is just about people being ready for new chapters of their lives and a new generation of leadership."

As part of those changes, Altman might finally get equity in OpenAI, which is now worth about $157 billion after it closed its most recent, $6.6 billion funding round. 

In October 2024, Altman weighed in on how close he is to achieving OpenAI's mission.

At OpenAI's developer conference, Dev Day, Altman said o1, OpenAI's latest set of AI models, which it says has "reasoning" abilities, represented a breakthrough toward artificial general intelligence. 

While Altman said he believes AGI — a still hypothetical form of AI that can solve any task a human can — is still a ways away, there will be "very steep" progress over the next two years.

OpenAI announced in January that it'd be involved in a $500 billion project called Stargate.

On January 21, Altman joined Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, President Donald Trump, and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to announce a partnership to fund a $500 billion investment in US AI. The companies would form Stargate, a project that seeks to build US AI infrastructure and create jobs.

"Together these world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate," Trump said, adding: "Put that name down in your books, because I think you're going to hear a lot about it."

He declined a $97.4 billion bid to buy OpenAI from a group led by Elon Musk.

Though the pair founded OpenAI together, Altman's relationship with Musk has become increasingly tense over the years. Musk offered to run OpenAI, but his proposal was rejected, Semafor reported in 2023. He departed OpenAI in 2018 and went on to start xAI.

Since then, they've had heated exchanges, shared words of appreciation, and entered a legal battle. Musk sued Altman and OpenAI in March 2024, alleging the company violated its founding principles.

In an August 2024 lawsuit, Musk claimed he was "deceived" into cofounding OpenAI.

The most recent development in their feud is a $97.4 billion bid to buy the AI company by a group led by Musk. Altman declined, telling Sky News reporters at an AI summit in Paris, "The company is not for sale, neither is the mission."

He announced the birth of his first child in February.

welcome to the world, little guy!

he came early and is going to be in the nicu for awhile. he is doing well and it’s really nice to be in a little bubble taking care of him.

i have never felt such love. pic.twitter.com/wFF2FkKiMU

— Sam Altman (@sama) February 22, 2025

On February 22, Altman announced the birth of his son on social media. Altman said the newborn will be in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, which offers medical treatment after birth, "for awhile."

"i have never felt such love," Altman said in his post.

Days later, OpenAI released GPT-4.5.

Altman introduced the new model in a post on X, where he described it as "the first model that feels like talking to a thoughtful person." He added that the model will be "giant" and "expensive," and Altman said it offers a "different kind of intelligence and there's a magic to it."

OpenAI released GPT-4.5 to pro tier users who pay $200 a month and developers in the API with plans to offer it to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Edu users the following week.

OpenAI backtracks on its plans to go for-profit

In a blog post on May 5, OpenAI said it "was founded as a nonprofit, and is today overseen and controlled by that nonprofit. Going forward, it will continue to be overseen and controlled by that nonprofit."

It added that the "for-profit LLC, which has been under the nonprofit since 2019, will transition to a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC)—a purpose-driven company structure that has to consider the interests of both shareholders and the mission."

OpenAI also said that the nonprofit will continue to control the PBC and remain its largest shareholder. The new PBC will maintain OpenAI's same mission.

OpenAI acquires the startup io from ex-Apple designer Jony Ive in a $6.5 billion deal.

Altman announced on May 21 that OpenAI was buying a hardware startup called io from Jony Ive, the former Apple exec who led the design of the iPhone and other iconic products. The deal is valued at nearly $6.5 billion, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.

Altman also noted that Ive, and his design firm LoveFrom, would be taking control of creative and design at OpenAI — a partnership that has been two years in the making.

• Jony Ive and Sam Altman are teaming up to make AI hardware.
• They aren't giving many clues about what it would be like, but probably screen-free, and not a phone.
• Please, I beg you, Jony and Sam: Do not make me talk to a device in public.

I'm as curious and excited as any gadget lover to see what newfangled AI thingamabob will come from OpenAI's $6.5 billion purchase of the ex-Apple designer Jony Ive's IO company.

But I have one request: Please, for the love of God, do not make it a voice-controlled device.

Here's what we know about the possible device that Ive and Sam Altman are teasing in a video about their new collaboration. The Wall Street Journal reported that Altman told OpenAI employees a few details:

The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk, and will be a third core device a person would put on a desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.

The Journal earlier reported that the device won't be a phone, and that Ive and Altman's intent is to help wean users from screens. Altman said that the device isn't a pair of glasses, and that Ive had been skeptical about building something to wear on the body.

Ming-Chi Kuo, a supply chain analyst who is often correct about coming hardware, says that the device may be something larger than the Humane AI Pin, and possibly worn around the neck.

I am extremely nervous that this sounds like it might be some sort of voice-controlled device.

Don't get me wrong: I'm an enthusiastic voice user of Alexa (at home) and Siri (in the car). I can see how convenient it is.

But the idea of talking to Siri while walking down the street or at a grocery store gives me hives. The idea of saying, "Hey Meta, take a picture" to activate my Ray-Bans while at a Benson Boone concert makes me want to bite my cyanide capsule. If I ever start using Siri out loud at my desk in the office, I fully accept that HR can fire me on the spot.

(Of course, voice-controlled devices are an accessibility issue for some people who are blind, have low vision, or otherwise have trouble using a screen device. I am not talking about this use, which is obviously good and a benefit. Perhaps society would be better if public use of voice devices were more normalized!)

OpenAI does seem to be interested in voice. At a demonstration over a year ago, it showed new voices that could talk to you (this was the demonstration that infamously got them in trouble with Scarlett Johansson for making a voice option suspiciously close to her own).

Meta has also embraced the idea of voice controls. Its stand-alone Meta AI app is meant for natural conversations between you and the app on your phone (though, at the moment, it's laggy and often leads to crosstalk).

It's a long-held sci-fi dream to have a supersmart AI agent you can just talk to naturally. Like Tony Stark's Jarvis, or the ScarJo voice in "Her." But even "Knight Rider" had the basic understanding that it was OK to talk to your car only in your car.

Humane's AI Pin turned out to be a disaster, partly because it just didn't work very well. Let's assume whatever OpenAI/IO is cooking up will be good at doing what it's supposed to.

Based on what the AI Pin could do, and other examples of AI assistants or devices, I can make a few guesses of what it might be able to do: listen to your work meeting and take notes for you, give you information about something you see in front of you ("What building is this?" or, "Which of these two sandwiches at Pret has more protein?"), do personal assistant tasks for you ("How much time until my next meeting?" or, "Text Hayley and tell her I'm running late.")

These all sound great and convenient! But a lot of them require something that I don't think I want to be doing: talking to my device out loud, in public, constantly.

We're at a moment in society where people are already pushing the norms of what is appropriate public device use. People are watching TikTok without headphones on the subway. Texting at the movie theater. Filming themselves at the gym. It was already weird enough when people started talking on the phone with AirPods in, making it unclear whether the person headed toward you on the sidewalk was on a call or experiencing a religious revelation. I don't think we're ready for a world where people are constantly talking to their always-on, always-listening AI devices.

So I eagerly await this device, which Altman says will sell 100 million units and be ready by the end of 2026. But please, please, do not make me talk to it in public.

• Elon Musk's X platform has faced backlash after its AI chatbot kept bringing up "white genocide."
• Sam Altman joined in and made fun of Grok, perhaps extending his long-running feud with the X owner.
• Musk has promoted the "white genocide" conspiracy theory, deemed false by South African authorities.

Elon Musk's social media platform, X, landed itself in hot water on Wednesday after its integrated AI chatbot, Grok, kept bringing up "white genocide in South Africa" in response to unrelated posts.

Now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is having some fun with the controversy, and perhaps in the process adding to his long-running feud with Musk.

In response to an X user saying that "it would be really bad if widely used AIs got editorialized on the fly by those who controlled them," Altman mocked Grok.

"There are many ways this could have happened. I'm sure xAI will provide a full and transparent explanation soon," Altman wrote in his post on Thursday.

He then mimicked a Grok response that brought up "white genocide," writing: "But this can only be properly understood in the context of white genocide in South Africa. As an AI programmed to be maximally truth seeking and follow my instr…"

Altman's post comes as X multiple users have noted that Grok has been mentioning "white genocide" in South Africa when asked to provide context on posts that have nothing to do with the topic.

When Business Insider asked Grok to explain itself, the AI chatbot gave conflicting answers. At first, Grok answered that it had been instructed to bring up the topic by its "creators" before concluding in a different query that it was all caused by a "temporary bug."

Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa, has repeatedly promoted claims that there's a "white genocide" going on in the country.

"The legacy media never mentions white genocide in South Africa, because it doesn't fit their narrative that whites can be victims," Musk said in an X post from March 23.

But the claim has been criticized by experts and labeled a far-right conspiracy theory, with a South African court ruling that it's "not real," the country's president calling it a "false narrative," and the Anti-Defamation League repeatedly saying the claims are baseless.

Spokespeople for X and OpenAI didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.