OpenAI’s hardware plans have been nothing but hearsay, court filing, and vibe check for the better part of a year now. But all that has ended this week, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who reports the first product from OpenAI’s hardware efforts is a screenless, mobile AI-powered speaker that can autonomously move around, and which is being described within OpenAI as “human-like AI companion to live in your home.” The company expects it to work in tandem with ChatGPT, control household devices, and gain information on its user through conversations and access to their emails.
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It is the outcome of OpenAI’s acquisition of io Products from Jony Ive’s studio worth $6.5 billion, and whose design is done in collaboration between his LoveFrom and a hardware group led by Tang Tan, formerly the head of Apple Design Group. Notably, it’s also coming out at quite a tricky time, as Apple had filed a lawsuit against OpenAI just last week for trade secret theft, with Tang Tan mentioned by name as one of the perpetrators. According to OpenAI, there’s no infringement in the device and is different enough from Apple’s own desk robot project.
Yet hidden in the same report lies another tidbit that keeps nagging at me. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has also looked into making wearables, like pendants, among other members of a family of around five different hardware products they have been developing. Additionally, in the documents for another trademark case involving iyO, we learned that OpenAI’s first product was definitely not going to be a wearable or in-ear product either. But let us entertain the idea that OpenAI’s next step could very well be to make a screen-less AI speaker – only this time, wearable on a necklace rather than placed on a stand.
The obvious reference point is the Humane AI Pin, and it’s the one OpenAI needs to actively avoid resembling. The Pin’s failure wasn’t the idea of a wearable AI companion, it was execution: a laser-projected display on your palm that barely worked outdoors, a body-worn camera that made people around you visibly uncomfortable, and battery life that couldn’t survive a workday. A necklace pendant sidesteps most of that simply by refusing to be a screen. No projector, no palm-reading gesture control, just a mic, a speaker, and maybe a camera. That’s a much smaller, more honest promise, and one that lines up neatly with what OpenAI is already building into its home speaker: voice-first, screenless, ambient.
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The other reference point is Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, arguably the only AI wearable actually working commercially. Their success comes from piggybacking on an object people already wear and understand, sunglasses, rather than asking for new behaviour. A necklace has a version of that same advantage. Jewellery is a category people already accept clipping onto their body, unlike a face-worn camera that broadcasts “I might be recording you” to every room you enter. A pendant could arguably get away with being always-listening in a way glasses can’t, because its social contract reads as “accessory,” not “surveillance device.”
But there are also some cons. The pendant does not have any stable surface for showing information on the display, which means that it would fully rely on voice communication without the possibility of using the screen for anything visual. In addition, battery capacity is limited by such a small size. That “always on-body microphone” issue would not be any less problematic despite the different form factor, only less visually threatening, making the issue even more serious.
It is clear that the pendant would not become the first product of OpenAI. The first product would still be the speaker, which would sit at your home and learn all of your habits long before it even moves from your home. However, I do find the idea of the pendant quite fascinating, more so as an actual possible device than as a rumor, after OpenAI has demonstrated its “personality” and voice interaction capabilities on another, non-wearable device.
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