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This Product Isn’t Real
What a fake image of a new OpenAI product tells us about misinformation online
Just over a week ago, Jony Ive and OpenAI announced their partnership in a release featuring a photo of Jony and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with an accompanying cuddly photo possibly calculated to resemble a classic Simon and Garfunkel album cover. Followup journalism quickly confirmed what was hinted at in a slickly produced video that accompanied the release: Ive and OpenAI were working on a new “pocket-size, contextually aware, screen-free” device that would be the first in a series of AI-related devices. Notably, the device will not have to worn on your body. (Ive confirmed he’d begun working with OpenAI as early as last September.)
Soon after the release was published last Wednesday, this image of a small, white square device with an Open AI logo on it began circulating on social media. Some posters inferred that it was an photo of the new device designed by Ive and OpenAI.
But the above depiction of a device resulting from an OpenAI/ Ive collaboration isn’t real. It’s an AI mock up. Still, I’ve seen a posts where someone alerts the poster to the fact that…
