#13 – They’ve already named the physical version of Chat GPT
The catch-up culture is reshaping friendship while new artificial companions like Moflin and Friend, the device from Sam Altman and Jony Ive, are emerging.
"
I loved Juanjo Villalba's article where he says that lately, meeting up with your friends has become just another task. Everyone is super busy, schedules are packed, and coordinating takes time, reminders, and even an occasional Doodle. Since we no longer have time to see each other, the few times we do meet up, it’s not to do things together, but to catch up. It's what the English speakers have dubbed catch-up culture. The culture of meeting to catch up with friends: why we no longer share life, we summarize it. Technological tools and social media have reshaped friendship and
""
their rituals. Now we follow our friends from the distance of screens, but we do fewer and fewer things with them. We’ve replaced that time with other activities, almost always mediated by screens. We’ve surrounded ourselves with new companions who keep us company during the day: friendships, if you will, a little more artificial. A month ago, Casio launched Moflin, a kind of plush toy with AI, or an AI disguised as a little bear. A companion for kids. A couple of days ago, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, was chatting in public with Jony Ive, Apple’s former star designer, about the new physical device they are creating
""
Together. There's been a lot of speculation about what the new form of human interfaces for connecting will be. With AI, it seems it no longer makes sense for it to be a screen, or therefore a phone, and that what we'll be carrying will be something else: connected headphones, Meta-style glasses… What is clear is that, design-wise, the mobile phone as we know it has its days numbered. That's why there's so much anticipation to see what form Jony Ive, the father of the iPhone, will give to the physical body of ChatGPT. In the talk, they hardly revealed anything. Just the provisional name of the device: Friend.
"