This Week in AI: OpenAI Has A Steve Jobs Moment

It's conference season in tech land, and this week that means updates from Microsoft and Google about new features for us and new tools for developers. Internally, some people jokingly call this time "May-hem" (as opposed to "June-sanity," "Broke-tober," or the oldie, "Steve-mas.")

Though Microsoft and Google were scheduled to hold developer conferences, OpenAI ended up grabbing attention for a new partnership, where the ChatGPT maker acquired the startup io for a reported $6.5 billion. The eyebrow raising number wasn't the only thing people were talking about though: io is a startup co-founded by Jony Ive, the famous designer who collaborated with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs on the designs for the iMac, iPod, iPhone and pretty much iEverything else. Ive has since left Apple to start his own design firm LoveFrom.

OpenAI says Ive and its CEO Sam Altman began collaborating a while ago, leading Ive to co-found a startup called io last year, focused on building AI-devices.

"The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco," Altman and Ive wrote in a signed statement to OpenAI's website. "As io merges with OpenAI, Jony and LoveFrom will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI and io."

What exactly these next-generation AI devices will be is unclear. But what we do know is that many people are betting that the era of the smartphone will end at some point, and it's led to a string of fascinating devices, such as the $299 Meta Quest and $3,499 Apple Vision Pro headsets from Meta and Apple. That belief in the post-screen future has also led to AI device-focused startups like the $199 Rabbit R1, the now-defunct $699 Humane AI pin, and the as-yet-unreleased $99 wearable Friend pendant.

So, that's what's up in ChatGPT world. Meanwhile...

Google's Veo goes viral

Google discussed a lot of the stuff you'd expect to hear during its I/O developer conference. The company said it would be expanding its next-gen search AI Mode to basically everyone, and that it would be integrating the Gemini AI into all manner of devices from wearables to headsets.

The company also announced upgrades to its Veo video production AI. The tool, similar to OpenAI's Sora, can create video from a mere text prompt. Veo hit version 3 this summer, and Google announced that some of its more high-paying customers will be able to use it to create video and audio that are synced. So, imagine a man reciting poetry on a beach. Or a random street-level video interview.

Even though the videos are impressive, they're still far from replacing Hollywood. But maybe it means this year's holiday Coca-Cola ad might be a little more appealing.

Speaking of appealing...

Google's shown us a vision of the future, again

Star Trek has the universal translator. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe has the Babel fish. And now Google has Meet.

Google announced a new real-time language translator for its Meet video chat product, and it's not just a translator. It plays an approximation of your voice, saying words in another language, just after you speak them. The usually staid Wall Street Journal probably said it best: "It's wild."

It isn't perfect, but seeing video of people holding a conversation in near real time across two languages seems otherworldly.

Google says the technology is already available for AI Pro subscribers, who pay $20 per month, and Ultra subscribers, who pay $250 per month. Google says it's starting with Spanish, but more languages will be made available "in the next few weeks."

Meanwhile, some 841 miles north of Google's announcements...

Microsoft Copilot gets upgrades

While Google offered plenty of announcements around consumer AI, Microsoft spent its Build developer conference talking about new tools for Copilot. The company re-committed to turning Copilot into a vibecoding machine, offering effectively the ability to code on its own, acting as a "pair programmer."

"You can hand off the time-consuming, but boring tasks to Copilot," Microsoft said. And it'll use your existing ideas and code, "while you focus on the interesting work."

The way it'll work is that you assign work to the agent using GitHub's issue tracker, "just as you would assign the same issue to one of your team members or yourself." Once it's done, it'll tag you and ask to review the code.

Of course, Microsoft isn't the only company building automated AI coding tools. Last week, OpenAI announced its Codex technology that effectively offers a similar experience. And Google of course this week announced its Jules Asynchronous coding agent," that "does coding tasks you don't want to do."

While all this vibecoding sounds cool and calm...

Teachers and students spar over AI

The last couple weeks have been full of stories about how students are using AI to cheat in school. "It isn’t as if cheating is new," New York Magazine explained earlier this month. "But now, as one student put it, 'the ceiling has been blown off.'"

Well, it turns out students aren't the only ones. A local Fox reporter in Maine shed light on a growing problem where students are finding their schoolwork being graded by AI. Worse, when one student challenged their AI-graded work, the teacher admitted the system's feedback was wrong.

"When [the student] asked her teacher for help understanding some of the feedback, she says her teacher told her to ignore some of the AI-generated comments, admitting they didn't make much sense," Fox wrote. Perhaps worse, after the student challenged their AI-generated score, the teacher ultimately agreed and revised the grade.

"It still doesn't make sense to me," the student said.

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Ian Sherr is a widely published journalist who's covered nearly every major tech company from Apple to Netflix, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and more for CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and CNET. Aside from writing, he tinkers with tech at home, is a longtime fencer -- the kind with swords -- and began woodworking during the pandemic.