Jony Ive helped design the iPhone. Now he’s trying to undo one of its most toxic legacies: the doomscroll.
The legendary Apple designer recently revealed he’s working on a new AI-powered device with Sam Altman of OpenAI — one that potentially looks to overturn the spiraling relationship we have with our smartphone screens.
“Even though there was no intention, I think there still needs to be responsibility and that weighs on me, as you know, heavily,” Ive said in early May, regarding any potential harm, however unintended, the products he helped design may have caused.
Doomscrolling, for those routinely capable of falling asleep before 11 p.m., is the act of endlessly (and sometimes mindlessly) consuming negative or meaningless content, long after it becomes informative, entertaining, or altogether good for you.
The word gained official recognition in 2023, finding its way into dictionaries around the same time that humanity collectively decided that despair is now a “vibe,” and life, like any good song, is infinitely better when slowed and reverbed into the kind of wistful lullaby that turns mood-meddling social media feeds into siren calls.
You feel it in the mental hangover that only those who trade Bud Light for blue light will recognize, after spending hour after hour of reading too many scathing, no-source opinions on social media, or scrolling your evening away on TikTok or Instagram.
Ive helped build the device that would make all of this possible. Looking ahead, he’s turning to the man helming the world’s most popular AI to help unmake it.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Ive and longtime friend Laurene Powell Jobs — founder of the Emerson Collective and widow to Steve Jobs — each opened up about their views on AI, and the new device Ive is designing at OpenAI. Powell Jobs has been a backer of Ive’s various projects since he left Apple in 2019.
When asked what AI device he wanted to design, Ive told the FT, “We deserve better. Humanity deserves better.”
Powell Jobs had a front-row seat in the development of this device, telling the FT that she witnessed how ideas turn into sketches that transform into prototypes.
“Just watching something brand new be manifested, it’s a wondrous thing to behold,” she told the publication.
Via a $3 million video — watch it above — Altman and Ive announced last month that OpenAI had acquired “io”, Ive’s design startup.
Ive’s collaboration with OpenAI goes back to 2023, and in 2024, Ive said of his work with OpenAI: “You somehow have to make friends with uncertainty.”
At Apple, the success of the iPhone was anything but uncertain. That first model gave way to multiple generations of iPhone clones, faster cell speeds, better streaming technology, and social media.
Smartphones and addictive notifications eventually got us to a point where, in January of this year, The Atlantic opined, “The internet is worse than a brainwashing machine.”
And that is likely just a sliver of what Ive must be thinking about when he says, “Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment.”
It only makes the questions about what kind of device he will create bigger. No web browser? A voice companion? An earpiece?
“Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment.”
Jony Ive to the Financial Times
While the cute Rabbit R1 and Humane AI pin — both AI devices that flopped for different reasons — came and went in 2024, whatever device Ive and OpenAI debut will seek a different outcome when it makes its appearance in 2026.
Though Ive’s design record is attracting much of the attention, what’s inside this device is arguably just as intriguing. Altman has big plans for ChatGPT; a document released last week proves it.
According to an internal OpenAI document released as part of the Department of Justice’s antitrust case against Google, OpenAI expects ChatGPT to become a “super assistant” this year.
“In the first half of next year, we’ll start evolving ChatGPT into a super-assistant: one that knows you, understands what you care about, and helps with any task that a smart, trustworthy, emotionally intelligent person with a computer could do,” reads the strategy document from late 2024.
It goes on to say that “the timing is right” for ChatGPT to evolve.
With Ive now working closely with OpenAI to design the hardware evolution of the company’s powerful tech, next year may be the moment AI takes us beyond the iPhone — and all of its harmful traits.
