OpenAI Says Its Physical Device Is ‘On Track’ for an Unveiling Later This Year

On Monday, Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said his company is “on track” to present its famously mysterious thingamajig to the public by the end of the year according to Axios. This would mean the previously rumored release date, September-ish, was not crazy after all.

Lahane’s announcement came during an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. However, Lahane did not provide any details about what this thing is or does. He also, according to Axios, said what he had described was the “most likely” release schedule, but that “we will see how things advance.”

For details about what the device is and does, you’ll have to read the aforementioned rumors from the China-based leaks account Smart Pikachu. That user posted a week ago that OpenAI is supposedly gunning for the market niche currently occupied by AirPods.

Smart Pikachu described manufacturing giant Foxconn working on something with the codename “Sweetpea,” a “special audio product” within a company project called “Gumdrop,” vaguely in the earbud or “open-ear headphones” zone. It would be two objects—one for each ear—and a little egg-shaped, dental-floss-holder-sized charging dock. Sweetpea would pack heavy duty processing power via a 2-nanometer, smartphone-style chip. Its release might also be followed, or accompanied, by four other “Gumdrop” devices between now and 2028, like a “home-style device,” and, um, a pen, according to Smart Pikachu. And once again: these are just unconfirmed rumors at this point.

But you’ll recall that the vast majority of the actual information OpenAI has given the world so far about its first device comes from two sources: 1) A very strange infomercial for the concept of friendship that OpenAI released in spring of last year starring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and legendary iPhone designer Jony Ive—whose product design company had just merged with OpenAI.

And 2) a much longer—but somehow less substantive—interview Ive and Altman gave in November in which they explained next to nothing, other than the fact that they’re aiming for a product so sensual that you’ll want to put various parts of your mouth all over it. Altman said it’s “so simple, but then it just does,” whatever that means. Ive said he’s into creating “sophisticated products that you want to touch and you feel no intimidation and you want to use almost carelessly and almost without thought.”

So there you go. It just does, and you won’t even think about it, and you’ll want to smooch it, and it might be available before the midterms. What more do you need to know?