OpenAI's First Hardware: Moving Screenless Speaker

OpenAI is building a speaker that moves. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that the company's first hardware device, still in development, is a screen-free smart speaker with mechanical parts that let it shift on its own, sync with ChatGPT, and handle other home AI tasks. Internally, people working on the project are reportedly calling it a "humanlike AI companion that lives in the home," a pitch that goes well beyond what Amazon's Echo or Google's Nest speakers ever promised.

Sam Altman's company has talked about entering the hardware business for years, with earlier chatter centered on a phone that would put OpenAI in direct competition with Apple. This device sounds like something else entirely. Sources told Bloomberg it's designed to have a "personality," to learn about its owner over time, and to pull from personal data like emails to get more tailored over time. Several former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and Mac are said to have helped build it.

The timing is awkward. OpenAI is already tangled in legal disputes tied to its hardware ambitions, and Apple's own recent moves only add to the friction.