Stuffing an AI chatbot into a consumer electronics device and turning out with a product people actually want has proven extremely difficult.
We’ve come across creepy and widely-hated pendants designed to listen to everything you say, as well as flawed AI “pins” that turned out to be a flaming dumpster fire, leading to frustration and disbelief.
Now Sam Altman’s OpenAI, which recruited former Apple design lead Jony Ive to lead its own hardware effort, is gearing up to release its would-be showstopper — and alas, it doesn’t sound like it’s managed to iterate beyond “clunky gadget that pretty much does stuff your phone already does.”
As The Information reports, a team of over 200 employees has been working on a smart speaker that features a built-in camera, which will recognize faces and identify objects thanks to a dose of AI. It will reportedly retail for anywhere from $200 and $300 and ship no earlier than the beginning of next year.
That’s right: the best idea that the big brains at OpenAI could cook up is yet another “household gadget that talks to you” — without a single clear differentiating feature from the phone you already have 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 looking to bring it to market, let alone if such a product could conjure any enthusiasm among consumers, remains unclear.
It’s a critical juncture for OpenAI as it continues to explore potential revenue streams to stop hemorrhaging billions of dollars a quarter. The company is already turning to ads to bring in some much-needed revenue, despite Altman having previously characterized them as a “last resort.”
Even just a smart speaker may be difficult to bring to the market. In October, the Financial Times reported that OpenAI’s partnership with Ive was encountering “technical issues,” delaying the first product’s release date from last year to this year. Considering the latest news, problems may continue to haunt the company as the release date continues to slip.
Other attempts at AI hardware have struggled to gain much traction, even with significant resources. Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa, which was launched in a barely half-working state last year, hasn’t really moved the needle.
Besides technical hiccups, OpenAI will have to tread carefully when it comes to user privacy. Marketing a device designed to ingest and analyze vast amounts of potentially intimate data isn’t exactly straightforward.
Consumers are already growing wary of AI, fearing that it’s 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 feeds scan an entire neighborhood.
Netizens criticized the ad as being “Orwellian,” leading some customers to reportedly disconnect and destroy their Ring cameras.
How users will react to an OpenAI smart speaker remains to be seen. But considering the many missed attempts we’ve come across so far, the company has a lot to prove.
More on the partnership: OpenAI’s Huge New Project Is Running Into Trouble Behind the Scenes
