In response, an OpenAI spokesperson said<\/a>, \u201cWe have no interest in other companies\u2019 trade secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n The lawsuit is about more than allegations of stolen manufacturing techniques. It\u2019s a preview of a much bigger shift. <\/p>\n AI companies are trying to escape the chat window and move into the physical world. But as OpenAI is discovering, hardware plays by rules software companies aren\u2019t used to.<\/p>\n A device of their own<\/p>\n OpenAI ignited mainstream interest in large language models with the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. The product improved quickly, but the user interface has still mostly been confined to a text box. <\/p>\n OpenAI\u2019s software has had to run on devices such as phones, laptops and desktops built by other companies for other purposes. <\/p>\n OpenAI has signalled for some time that it wants its own hardware. It hired Jony Ive, Apple\u2019s former chief design officer, to lead a hardware effort. Last year, in a promotional video<\/a>, OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Ive discussed, at length, the fact they would soon be working on hardware.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n OpenAI does hardware \u2013 but starts small<\/p>\n Last week, OpenAI launched its first hardware device. It\u2019s not the vaunted Ive collaboration, but instead a tiny keyboard.<\/p>\n The Codex Micro<\/a> is a little box co-developed with electronics company Work Louder, featuring six illuminated keys that indicate the status of a user\u2019s AI coding agents. Green means an unread message, blue shows the agent thinking, orange is asking for approval, and red represents an error. Non-glowing, blank white means the agent is idle. <\/p>\n The Codex Micro is OpenAI\u2019s first branded hardware device. It\u2019s a modest debut, but the initial run of US$230 devices quickly sold out<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, it\u2019s far from the leap in human-computer interaction OpenAI has been promising. Nor is it the product at the centre of Apple\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n Instead, according to reporting responding to the lawsuit<\/a>, OpenAI\u2019s Ive\u2013Altman device will be a portable \u201cthing\u201d you tote along from room to room. It will sense through a speaker and camera, but has no screen. Parts of it will move by themselves, \u201ccreating a sense that it is alive and not just an object responding to commands\u201d.<\/p>\n Intimate, not inanimate<\/p>\n To understand why OpenAI\u2019s device moves on its own, it helps to start with an animated desk lamp.<\/p>\n Pixar\u2019s iconic Luxo Jr. lamp mascot<\/a> never gained a face, a voice or a human body, yet audiences have little trouble reading it as curious, playful or dejected. Those qualities come entirely from movement, posture and timing. A handful of carefully designed physical cues turn this ordinary object into something people relate to as a social being.<\/p>\n This tendency has a name: anthropomorphism. In 2003, human\u2013computer interaction researcher Brian Duffy argued<\/a> that anthropomorphism helps people make sense of unfamiliar technology by letting them apply the social instincts they already use to read other people. These design choices are based on how humans perceive \u201capparent behaviour<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Apple has tested this idea in its own labs. A 2025 research project called ELEGNT<\/a> built a lamp-like robot and compared two ways of making it move: purely functional motion versus motion designed to also express intention or emotion. The expressive movements measurably increased how engaged users felt with the robot.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n It is this type of hardware that will allow AI to escape the screen. <\/p>\n The death of social media and the rise of social machines<\/p>\n Apple\u2019s lawsuit is a signal of where the industry is heading next.<\/p>\n The buzzword of the week in Silicon Valley is \u201cphysical AI<\/a>\u201d. This is the idea that artificial intelligence is moving into the physical world, through devices that can move, listen, watch and respond to the people around them.<\/p>\n That shift intersects another. Researchers have argued that social media platforms have shifted away<\/a> from enabling reciprocal interaction and toward algorithmic broadcasting and parasocial observation<\/a>, prompting some to describe social media as no longer particularly social at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n So what will replace that social function? The industry is betting it could be a new kind of AI-powered companion: one that attentively reads a child a bedtime story<\/a>, or a device<\/a> that keeps \u201ceye contact\u201d with you as you chat about your day. <\/p>\n The cultures of software and hardware<\/p>\n The lawsuit also exposes a culture clash between software and hardware. Software companies have largely been built on the premise that information should flow freely \u2013 open source, Creative Commons, \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d. <\/p>\n Hardware has run on different rules. Competitive advantage there is harder to copy and slower to build. It is embedded in manufacturing processes, supplier relationships, proprietary materials and decades of accumulated engineering knowledge. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/file-20260723-57-ptj8gj.jpg\")
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\n OpenAI \/ Work Louder<\/p>\n