Jony Ive's OpenAI Device Barred From Using 'io' Name
77 points
by thm
7 hours ago
| 13 comments
| macrumors.com
| HN
inopinatus
6 hours ago
[-]
It’s not too late to reverse direction and call it “Oi”. Could there be a more perfect verbal activation? They could get Jason Statham or Vinnie Jones to do promotion.
reply
wmf
5 hours ago
[-]
Oi mate, you got a loicense for that trademark?
reply
hodgesrm
4 hours ago
[-]
Not just trademarks! I can also picture Jason Statham getting pretty bent out of shape about GPL violations.
reply
BigTTYGothGF
3 hours ago
[-]
For further distinction you can put the guy's first initial in there and call it a JOI.
reply
sda2
38 minutes ago
[-]
… a jerk off instruction?
reply
yellow_lead
5 hours ago
[-]
The device would be popular in England
reply
hendiatris
5 hours ago
[-]
And Brasil, Portugal and other portuguese-speaking places
reply
stronglikedan
5 hours ago
[-]
Also with 1990's American skinheads.
reply
platevoltage
5 hours ago
[-]
I'm sure they could license some Cock Sparrer songs as well.
reply
ricardonunez
3 hours ago
[-]
Oi, tudo bem?
reply
saaaaaam
4 hours ago
[-]
That photo of Ive and Altman is weird as hell. It looks like a promo shot for a bad early 90s made for TV movie.
reply
ntoskrnl_exe
2 hours ago
[-]
It's so strangely creepy, it always feels like a it's cropped from a Giorgio Armani perfume ad or something.
reply
recursivecaveat
3 hours ago
[-]
The associated announcement is good for a strange-vibes chuckle as well: https://openai.com/sam-and-jony/
reply
outside1234
4 hours ago
[-]
"narcissistic dance off"
reply
nicbou
4 hours ago
[-]
Anything I've seen about Ive hints at him being a kind, passionate man. I don't agree with his design choices but that's no excuse to hate him as a person.
reply
grim_io
5 hours ago
[-]
What even is this mysterious device?

A device trying to duplicate a part of smartphone/smartwatch functionality is doomed to fail, as those can easily just be an app on said devices.

So the computation part is likely out of the question. Input/output remains, and there is really not much you can innovate here.

Smartglasses? EarPod clones?

reply
paxys
5 hours ago
[-]
It's going to be the Humane v2, just with a reality distortion field around it this time.
reply
shaftway
1 hour ago
[-]
The article says the claimed in court that they're not working on a wearable device. So that rules out headphones, glasses, maybe comm badges.
reply
irthomasthomas
16 minutes ago
[-]
So, an echo style tabletop device?
reply
spicybbq
5 hours ago
[-]
Reading about it, I see some characteristics: no screen, possibly something you can carry in your pocket, possibly has ai-driven awareness of its environment.

OpenAI wants to get into the hardware business, so they came up with something. Is it going to be something people actually want? I am skeptical, but as a consumer it's cool that so companies are trying out various new devices even if most of them are no good.

reply
notatoad
4 hours ago
[-]
given the vagueness of the available information, i'm guessing they haven't actually defined its capabilities yet.

They can accept that building a smartphone is doomed to fail, and they want to build some hardware, so they're experimenting with all the "not a smartphone" form factors they can think of to see what sticks.

reply
awestroke
5 hours ago
[-]
It's just Ive being out of touch
reply
ncr100
5 hours ago
[-]
Oi!
reply
outside1234
4 hours ago
[-]
I'm beginning to believe that the picture of Sam and Jony is the product
reply
foobarian
4 hours ago
[-]
So... Alexa but hooked up to ChatGPT?
reply
sampton
4 hours ago
[-]
Startrek chest pin.
reply
riffic
4 hours ago
[-]
combadge
reply
outside1234
4 hours ago
[-]
It is a device that justifies a $40T market cap. /s

(Please don't look at our $60B a year burn rate financials.)

reply
retube
5 hours ago
[-]
I am absolutely AGOG to know why this has to be a separate device. It must involve hardware and/or instrumentation not built into smartphones. Microwave scanner? mini x-ray machine? neutrino detector??? what could it be
reply
sethops1
5 hours ago
[-]
Leaks were saying it's a Friend competitor https://friend.com

Just a chatbot in a box.

reply
hadlock
3 hours ago
[-]
The market is ripe for ChatGPT in a box, replacing google home or Alexa desktop pucks. God knows the google home assistant has been detuned and detuned to the point it barely works for turning the lights on and off at this point. There's a handful of golf-ball shaped objects on AliExpress for $25 that provide this functionality, powered by an ESP32 IoT chip, but doesn't have wakeword capability (yet). I picked up two for a Home Assistant voice assistant project but haven't had time to dive into it yet.
reply
c1sc0
3 hours ago
[-]
Because Apple won’t give you access to what you need as a dev for this kind of thing on iPhone: always-on audio listening to multiple streams : ambient sound, my voice, whatever is playing in my headphones … think an AI assistant listens to audiobooks together with you and allows you to ask questions / lookup things etc …
reply
dmix
6 hours ago
[-]
I hadn't heard of iyO, their products look interesting. Seems to be an Alexa type product via airpod style headphones? https://www.iyo.ai/iyo-one

and some sort of 'wand' that can "see your surrounding area", maybe radar or imaging? https://www.iyo.ai/iyo-wand

reply
hundchenkatze
5 hours ago
[-]
They don't mention a camera specifically, but it looks like the Wand has a camera in the end of it.

And they mention "Holding and pressing the action button turns the Privacy Light red and allows the agents to see anything you point Wand at."

reply
ruralfam
5 hours ago
[-]
"Hey iyO, can you help me load your page faster?" Incredible (on an older MBP).
reply
snafeau
6 hours ago
[-]
I wonder why they're trying to establish separate branding for hardware. Considering that OpenAI's strongest advantage right now is the ChatGPT brand and they're anyway cutting efforts on other products, wouldn't it make more sense to use the ChatGPT brand?

They certainly don't seem to have a problem with using the same name repeatedly given the 300-or-so products called Codex at OpenAI.

reply
rvz
6 hours ago
[-]
Revenge is a dish best served icy cold.
reply
jujube3
3 hours ago
[-]
Now the makers of the Yo app should sue iyo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)

reply
TZubiri
6 hours ago
[-]
Ridiculous, of course io is standard for input output, or even for on/off or even 1 and 0.

Hopefully this gets appealed, but it might be too late for this product launch

reply
ameliaquining
5 hours ago
[-]
From the article: "However, the ruling does not bar all uses of the io name, only marketing and selling hardware similar to iyO's."
reply
livelaughlove69
5 hours ago
[-]
But openai presumably wants to trademark it too?
reply
TZubiri
2 hours ago
[-]
Oh, I assumed it was part of the product name rather than a whole. Like Chat IO, or just the wake up call and vocative name.
reply
johnwheeler
6 hours ago
[-]
What is this OpenAI company I keep hearing about?
reply
tim333
1 hour ago
[-]
I think it's Microsoft's chatbot division.
reply
lawlessone
6 hours ago
[-]
predictive text, real big again.
reply
barfoure
5 hours ago
[-]
I don’t know if that picture is so fake as to be incredibly dumb but holy shit, burn it with fire.
reply
arach
6 hours ago
[-]
is yo taken?
reply
striking
6 hours ago
[-]
Yo definitely occupies an existing part of my mindspace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo_(app)
reply
wlesieutre
5 hours ago
[-]
But imagine a modernized version of this where you can leverage AI to say "yo" to people?
reply
zackmorris
4 hours ago
[-]
reply
recursive
5 hours ago
[-]
Yo MTV Raps beat them to trademark office.
reply
morkalork
6 hours ago
[-]
About a decade ago
reply
andrewmcwatters
6 hours ago
[-]
It’s such an uncreative name, anyway. It’s like something you’d read from a hardware engineering GitHub repository where the author was oblivious to how searchable the intellectual property would be.
reply