ChatGPT: CEO wants US$1 billion to make ‘AI iPhone’ – 09/28/2023 – Tech

The man behind ChatGPT, Sam Altman, wants to take artificial intelligence out of computer and cell phone screens to create a device as revolutionary as the first iPhone, with its touch screen.

To do this, he sought out the head of design responsible for designing Apple’s first smartphone and several of its subsequent generations, Jony Ive. The designer worked with Steve Jobs and only stopped collaborating with Apple in 2022.

The financing of this project would be the responsibility of Masayoshi Son, executive president of technology investment fund Soft Bank. It would be up to Son to raise US$1 billion (around R$5 billion) to get the idea off the ground.

The negotiation was revealed by the specialized website Information. This Thursday (28), the Financial Times gathered more details about the initiative.

There are still no clues about the format of the new device (it may not even be a cell phone), but Altman has been meeting Ive at the designer’s studio in San Francisco for the last few months to brainstorm ideas, according to the Financial Times. The plans are to use technology from OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) to develop a physical product aimed at a broad audience.

In addition to his experience at Apple, Ive works at his current company, LoveFrom, AirBnB and Ferrari.

After the launch of ChatGPT, Altman said he was surprised by the success of the platform, considering that the chatbot powered by artificial intelligence was still an incomplete product. The technology impressed by delivering convincing text responses to the most diverse requests.

Technology giants such as Apple itself, Amazon and Meta (owner of Facebook) have invested in alternatives to smartphones centered on artificial intelligence.

This month, Amazon announced that it will improve its virtual assistant Alexa with artificial intelligence and Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg announced AI options for Meta’s augmented reality glasses — Apple said it should enter this last market next year at an event at first semester.

Even the launch of the iPhone 15 was full of mentions of adaptations for virtual intelligence.

Although stagnant since 2021, after a surge due to the Covid pandemic, the smartphone market is, by far, the busiest among electronic devices: 96.8% of respondents from around the world to a survey by the research company We Are Social say have a smartphone, compared to 57.7% of second-placed computers or notebooks.

In a February publication on X (formerly Twitter), Altman compared artificial intelligence to Apple’s smartphone with this question: “AI is a rare example of something super popular that most people underestimate the medium-term impact of. other examples of this besides the iPhone?”

OpenAI has not entered into partnerships with electronics companies such as Apple and Samsung to date. The artificial intelligence startup’s main partner, Microsoft, focuses on computer programs, despite having its own less commercially successful computers and smartphones.

The presence in SoftBank’s Son business, in addition to money, brings the chip developer Arm, owner of patents used by Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm (the main brand of processors for mobile devices).

SoftBank holds 90.6% of Arm’s shares, valued at US$54.5 billion in a recent investment round. Although it does not have projects focused on artificial intelligence, the startup signaled that it would start working with the technology in the near future, which increased the value of its shares.

No company involved in the business has yet come forward to comment on the matter.