Siri suddenly has a whole lot of company in being terribly late

As we all know, Apple is famously late to the AI ​​party. So late, in fact, that he missed everyone doing keg stands and Kevin jumping off the roof into the pool. Plus, the cops show up. He missed all the fun.

Some who were at the party seem to have less fun the next day.

Take Openai and Star Designer Jony Ive, who is grappling with a series of technical problems with their secret new artificial intelligence device, as they push to launch a blockbuster tech product next year.

Openai: “Okay, yes, he’s a pig, but look at that $6.5 billion lipstick!”

Despite Ive and his team’s development of the hardware…the obstacles remain in the device’s software and the infrastructure needed to power it.

ARS Technica, October 6, 2025

Openai: “We have this beautiful brick, now we just need to make it TO DO something.”

Really, how hard could it be? Someone sent them a few billion more dollars.

This includes deciding the “personality” of the assistant……

Just tell him to turn down his level of sarcasm. Very easy.

“The concept is that you should have a friend who is a computer who isn’t your weird AI girlfriend…”

Hey, don’t call Macalope Ai Waifu’s eared kawaii anime “weird”! She almost never asks to build her an indestructible Android body. At least while he’s awake, anyway.

Eh. Why is the macalope holding this soldering iron and where do all these parts come from?

…Privacy concerns…

Oh, there are privacy concerns with AI? Seriously? You. Don’t do it. Say. Very shocking, indeed, if true.

It’s almost as if these companies care more about rushing to market than about privacy. And as if the tech press is tired of trying to rate privacy as a purchasing criterion because it’s so bad and boring, and we can’t just talk about it amusing thing?

…and budgeting…

And here the Macalope thought AI was a venture capital perpetual motion machine. If you run out of money, you’re just acquired by the company you acquired last year. Duh. Come on, it’s not that difficult.

Several people familiar with the plans said Openai and Ive were working on a device roughly the size of a smartphone that users would communicate with via a camera, microphone and speaker. One person suggested it might have multiple cameras.

So the only difference between it and a smartphone is that it won’t have a screen. Maybe the Macalope is fake, but it seems like another swing at trying to make a device that takes humans off their screens. The negative effects of people immersed in their screens all the time is something I’ve lamented lately, after making big bank at Apple, people addicted to devices with screens.

Idg

Well, if that’s it, the Macalope wishes you good luck. People really seem to love their smartphones and if your solution is a device that will talk to you instead… well, good luck with that. Plus, saying screens are bad and then trying to replace technology that ignores copyright in order to generate questionable responses seems like a lateral move at best.

One person said the device would be “always on”…

Can we go back to these privacy issues for a second?

Openai overtook Elon Musk’s SpaceX to become the world’s most valuable private company this week, after a deal that valued it at $500 billion. One of the ways the chatppt maker is looking to justify the price is a push into hardware.

Don’t call it a bubble, though!

“The concept is that you should have a friend who is a computer who is not your weird AI girlfriend,” one source said.

All these issues will surely be sorted in time for Openai to ship… something next year.

Hey, totally unrelated, but remember the human spit? After the company was acquired by HP for less than half the amount it raised in the capital, former CEO Imran Chaudhri now has the coveted job of… Let’s see here… touting the battery life of HP laptops in opening videos.

Apple may have missed shipping an improved Siri, and that’s a legitimate issue the company needs to address sooner rather than later. But it’s not the only one stumbling in the rush to ship AI products.