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 introduce its famously mysterious Thingamajig to the public by the end of the year, according to Axios. This would mean that the previously rumored release date, September-ish, wasn’t crazy at all.

Lahane’s announcement came during a World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland. However, Lahane didn’t provide any details about what the thing is or does. According to Axios, he also said what he described was the “most likely” release schedule, but “we’ll see how things go.”

For details on what the device is and does, you’ll have to read the above rumors from China-based leak account Smart Pikachu. That user posted a week ago that OpenAI is taking over the market space currently occupied by AirPods.

Smart Pikachu described working with manufacturing giant Foxconn on a “special audio product” codenamed “Sweetpea” within the company’s project called “Gumdrop”, which is vaguely in the earbud or “open-ear headphone” realm. It’ll be two items – one for each ear – and a small egg-shaped, dental-floss-holder-sized charging dock. Sweetpea will provide heavy-duty processing power through a 2-nanometer, smartphone-style chip. Its release may also be followed by four other “gumdrop” devices between now and 2028, such as a “home-style device,” and, um, a penAccording to Smart Pikachu. And once again: these are just unconfirmed rumors at this time.

But you might recall that the majority of the actual information OpenAI has given the world about its first device so far has come from two sources: 1) A very strange note-book for the friendship concept that OpenAI released last spring by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and famed iPhone designer Jony Ive — whose product design company recently merged with OpenAI.

And 2) a much longer—but somehow less pithy—interview that Ive and Altman gave in November in which they revealed nothing except the fact that they’re aiming for an erotic product that you’ll want to put in different parts of your mouth. Altman said it’s “pretty simple, but then it just happens,” whatever that means. Ive said he wanted to create “sophisticated products that you want to touch and you don’t feel any fear and you want to use almost casually and almost without thinking.”

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