Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Jaden Schaefer.
Chapter 2: What is OpenAI's bet on audio AI about?
Today, we're talking about the fact that OpenAI is betting the farm on audio AI. This is way beyond chat GPTs, just getting a nicer voice. There's a bunch of, there's a new report from the information that says that the company has spent the last two months consolidating engineering product research teams to rebuild its AI audio models. And they're doing this from the ground up.
This is all ahead of an audio first personal device, which we're expecting to come out in roughly a year from now. There is a lot going on in the story and a lot is at stake. So we're going to be covering all of that on the podcast today.
Chapter 3: How is OpenAI restructuring its audio AI teams?
If you want to try the latest AI audio models from OpenAI or from Eleven Labs, which in my opinion is the best at the moment, I would recommend going and checking out AIbox.ai. I have a playground that lets you access over 40 of the top models, everything from OpenAI, Meta, Google, DeepSeek, tons more.
All these audio models, they're on there and you can try them out for $20 a month on my own startup, AIbox.ai. I'll leave a link in the description if you want to go try that out. This big focus that we're seeing from OpenAI right now to push audio AI, I think shifts or essentially is kind of showing what's happening in the broader tech world.
Right now, screens are starting to fade into the background. They're not, you know, the trendiest thing. Most of these, a lot of these Silicon Valley startups and venture capitalists A lot of people are talking about how screen time or screen addiction is bad. And so it feels like people are kind of pushing away from screens. And with that, audio is kind of taking the forefront.
It feels like this is the response. There's, of course, smart speakers that have already normalized voice assistance. And those are in over a third of U.S.
Chapter 4: What new audio-first personal device is OpenAI developing?
households. Meta recently added, of course, a feature to their Ray-Ban smart glasses. They use a five microphone array that essentially isolates a voice in a noisy environment. So if you're talking to someone in a bar or at You know, in some sort of noisy store or market and you look at them, it has these five microphones, isolates their voice and in your ear will amplify just their voice.
So effectively, it is, you know, turning your head into a directional microphone. Google also started testing audio overviews in June, which is, you know, covering the search results into conversational summaries.
And Tesla, of course, is weaving XAI's grok into its vehicles to create a voice driven assistant that can help you when you're doing navigation or even like climate control, that kind of stuff. You could just talk to it and say, hey, like, you know, turn the heat up, etc. So big tech, I think right now is not the only one that is betting really big on audio.
There is a collection of startups that are chasing the same idea. There's, you know, some of them that have, you know, been successful and others that have it feels like, failed extraordinarily, including Humane's AI pin, which burned through hundreds of millions of dollars before essentially becoming a bit of a cautionary tale for screenless wearables. There's, of course, the Friend AI pendant.
This is a necklace that you wear around your neck. It got famous because the CEO bought Friend.com for like $6 million and basically blew their entire fundraising round on the domain name. And with that, their necklace is essentially just sitting there and it records your life and it keeps you company. And, you know, some people are curious about it.
A lot of people are worried about privacy concerns. You know, it's a crazy product. So I think right now there's at least two more companies, including Sandbar and another that's led by the Pebble founder, Eric, which if anyone remembers Pebble, this was like the biggest Kickstarter of all time. Back in the day, I think they raised like $10 million for a smartwatch.
This is before the Apple Watch came out. Very cool, novel idea. And they are developing an AI-powered ring. So there's actually two companies.
So the Pebble founder, Eric, and then also the company called Sandbar, both creating these AI-powered rings that are going to come out this year, which essentially lets users stop talking to your phone and actually talk to your quote-unquote hand, as it were. So Right now, there's a lot of different shapes, whether those are necklaces or rings or glasses.
But I think underlying all of this is basically the same thing. And that is that audio is being positioned as the next dominant interface, right? We're so used to using our phones. We're so used to typing things out. But now every environment from your living room to your car, to of course your body, all of those are turning into a control surface.
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Chapter 5: Why are screens becoming less popular in tech?
And I was like, OK, I can do that thing. And I like just kind of cut it off because I'm like, great, whatever. Here's everything you need to know. And I'm like, just listen, just tons and tons of information for this specific problem, trying to get all the context, kind of the same way I would copy and paste like a massive document in.
And I can only imagine if like halfway through that it was interrupting me to ask like follow on questions where I'm like, no, I'll just listen to all my information first. Wait till I stop speaking. So. I don't know. They're trying to make it sound more human, but you can imagine ways that that will also be more annoying when you're trying to use it to get some work done.
Anyways, we'll see how customizable that is. They said that they are also going to be imagining an entire lineup of devices, including glasses or a screenless speaker that behave less like utilities and more like companions. So that's kind of interesting approach that OpenAI is taking.
And all of that and a lot of those products, I think, are going to come basically out of the partnership that Apple, well, not Apple, but Johnny Ive, who was formerly the Apple design chief, he made a deal with OpenAI. They bought his hardware company, which we don't even know what the product was, but they bought it for $6.5 billion.
With that, they essentially got his design firm, which was called IO. This happened back in May of last year. And I think the big focus that he's always said with his design firm is that he has this big emphasis on reducing device addiction. So Audio First products, in his view, offer a chance to correct some of the mistakes. that happened in earlier generations of consumer tech.
His idea is that we're addicted to all these bright, colorful videos and things on our screens, and so if he can make a screenless device, then people are going to be less addicted, but it can be kind of a useful thing. What's interesting, though, is they specifically say they're not trying to create a utility or this useful thing.
They're trying to create a companion, so something that you talk to,
that you maybe use it gives you information ideas i'm so curious where this uh companion goes i think that's what friend is sort of trying to make um with their pendant like it listens to you and it can message you on your phone that's the other crazy thing about pendant or the the find pendant it doesn't it doesn't actually talk to you don't have conversations with it it just has a microphone which transcribes the text and then sends you text messages and
Anyways, it's interesting. There's a lot of things at stake here. I'd be very curious to see if the companionship one really is that popular. Like I definitely can see value in using these for utility, but companionship is interesting. I will say recently, I had a very, very long conversation. It was, of course, the new year.
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