Jony Ive has admitted that he feels personally responsible for the consequences brought about by the iPhone—and wants his new device to avoid the same fate. In a recent interview, he explained that collaborating with OpenAI has become a way for him to rethink his own legacy and create something more human-centered.
Earlier, SFG Media reported on the voice-powered gadget being developed by Jony Ive and Sam Altman—and how similar concepts have failed in the past. Today, the spotlight is less on the product itself and more on the attempt to correct a fundamental mistake of the tech era.
Former Apple chief designer Jony Ive has admitted that his new work is partly driven by a desire to take responsibility for the consequences he once helped to unleash. In a video interview for Stripe, he acknowledged still feeling the weight of the changes the iPhone brought into people’s daily lives—and not all of them for the better.
"When you create something new, unintended consequences are inevitable," Ive noted. "You hope they’ll be delightful, but that’s not always the case. I was directly involved with devices whose consequences turned out to be quite troubling."
Ive, the designer behind the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and other iconic Apple products, left the company in 2019 and founded his own studio, LoveFrom. Today, he is working on a new device in collaboration with OpenAI—and all signs suggest that this was the project he referred to in the interview. Ive has yet to reveal what the product is, but explained his motivation: "Even if your intentions were pure, if you were part of something that caused harm, you have a responsibility to own it. That sense of responsibility has been my main source of motivation."
What troubles him most is how smartphones and social media have changed user behavior—especially in the absence of early discussions about potential risks. He emphasized that things feel different with AI: "What encourages me is that it's almost impossible to discuss artificial intelligence now without addressing safety. That conversation didn’t happen with social media at the beginning, and that deeply concerned me."
Details about the joint project between Ive and OpenAI remain under wraps. However, as previously reported by SFG Media, the device is being designed by Ive’s studio LoveFrom, with the involvement of his former Apple colleagues Tang Tan and Evans Hankey. According to sources, Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are exploring the idea of a fundamentally new kind of device—one in which artificial intelligence doesn’t just support traditional software, but takes over much of the user's workload.
Jony, Again
Jony Ive is Developing a Voice Gadget with OpenAI
Sounds Promising, but Two Similar Devices Recently Failed on the Market
