That Loving Feeling
Yesterday, OpenAI dropped a new release of ChatGPT and today the internet has exploded. Again. My social feeds across the five or so — sigh — networks that I regularly check are bursting at the seams with images created with OpenAI’s new image functionality. And it’s hardly a surprise; it’s fun. Who doesn’t love cartoons of Creed and paintings of Don Draper?1 Legible text? Be still my heart!
It very much reminds me of the early days of DALL-E. In that pre-ChatGPT world, OpenAI’s OG image generator — which looks comically rudimentary now — had my mind racing with all the possibilities for this new technology. These days, far more advanced capabilities are just rolled out on a random Tuesday in March without even a new model release, let alone an event. It’s just baked into their ‘4o’ model as a feature.2
Google and Microsoft — two multi-trillion-dollar companies — also had AI updates to share yesterday.3 Seemingly, no one cared. Because neither could make me look like a Studio Ghibli character.
OpenAI is on a roll. Despite all the turmoil and turbulence they’ve gone through internally (and externally), they just keep killing it with these product releases.4 To the point where, again, they don’t even have to technically roll out a new product. They can just drop what they consider to be a feature update and it spreads like wildfire, likely melting their servers in the process.
I mean, my entire Xitter feed is images generated with ChatGPT at the moment. That's not an exaggeration. The entire feed. From start to finish. How do we think you-know-who feels about that?
But beyond Xitter (and their stake in xAI), this is, of course, an issue for every player in the AI space. At least on the consumer-facing side, OpenAI is the clear winner at the moment. Maybe that changes as Google keeps getting more aggressive with morphing Gemini into Search — I mean, they are certainly not being timid with ‘AI Mode’, good for them! But when I actually sat down to watch the video OpenAI posted alongside the roll-out, my mind went elsewhere – as it so often does, to Apple.
I’m not even talking about Apple and AI here. We’ve done that, a lot. Probably enough — for now (famous last words). I’m talking about Apple in general. Watching this OpenAI video — again, not an event, just a product walk-through with various team members (though this one happened to be “MC’d” by Sam Altman) — I had this old, familiar feeling as they walked through the new features: joy.
As ridiculous as it may sound, I was almost giddy around what I was seeing. It’s a feeling that I recall well from many an Apple event back in the day.
“Yes, this is exactly what I wanted! They did it!” That kind of thing.
This will sound unfair or harsh to Apple, but I really don't think that it is. I can really only speak for myself here, and perhaps I'm alone – but I suspect that I'm not – it has been a while since I've gotten that feeling from an Apple announcement. That loving feeling.
Maybe I’m too old and cynical, but I think it points to a larger shift that has happened. Apple used to be the upstart that would hit us over the head with these fun new products which you couldn’t wait to try. But the world has changed. Apple is now the most valuable company in the world and the products they release, while still often impressive in their own way, often lack the fun and whimsy that OpenAI seems to be capturing at the moment.
When we talk about tech presentations, there has long been a natural inclination to compare them to Apple’s keynotes. The company — and Steve Jobs in particular — was somehow able to package these events into almost a product in and of themselves. So much so that they were endlessly copied, often in flat and sometimes in cringe-worthy ways. They set the bar, the industry followed.
But now as we’re drifting further and further away from the last actual “SteveNote”, other companies have figured out how to do these in their own way. Of note, I think Snap is particularly good at this. Meta, less so. Amazon has gone from throwing out everything on stage — perhaps literally the kitchen sink (powered by Alexa) at one point — to a more emotive turn. Google. Microsoft. Samsung. Etc.
Last week, NVIDIA held their GTC conference — their second massive keynote in the past few months — and obviously the Apple comparisons come out in full force there. Perhaps for the first time since “peak Apple” (if you want to believe that we’re past "peak Apple" – at least when it comes to events), one company is completely setting an agenda for the rest of their industry on stage. And because of the rise of AI and just how central NVIDIA is to the movement thanks to the fact that their chips are powering the entire thing, they may actually be more powerful in ways than Apple ever was. Jobs had his reality distortion field, but Jensen Huang is “AI Jesus”.
Anyway, I’m sure there are plenty of folks who get giddy over what NVIDIA is hawking on stage. But it’s not the same type of consumer product excitement you’re gonna get from companies like Apple and now, OpenAI. And what’s wild is that OpenAI is engendering these feelings — at least in me! — without doing the massive keynote-style event.5 They’re just dropping these videos on YouTube. They’re not even particularly polished! But the products — which also aren’t even fully polished! — are just that exciting, at the forefront of this new world.
The products very nearly – and sometimes literally – speak for themselves.
This is less a swipe at Apple, and more just noting how much the world has shifted. But if it is an indictment of Apple, it’s in that they haven’t been able to capture the magic as they seemingly used to time and time again. Announcements are now more streamlined and perhaps a bit boring — and that’s in part because they have to be. Because of the scale at which Apple now operates, with their products integral to the lives of billions, they can’t really rock the boat too much. The new MacBook Air has to be a slightly better version of the product we all know and love. Because we all know and love it!
Yes, they stumbled out of the gate with the VisionPro, where they had a shot to capture this magic. While the initial announcement certainly generated buzz, they’ve failed to live up to that hype, which is the real risk they face going forward: their mouth is writing checks on stage that their products can’t cash. The AI fiasco — here we go again — is just the mess that’s most indicative of that trend.
As a quick aside, as everyone is sharing images of themselves (and yes, various famous people) as cartoon characters made with this update to ChatGPT, how did Apple not own this with Image Playground? It's really the only app they made from the ground up to put their AI to work and to do pretty much exactly what people are doing here with ChatGPT. I mean, there are a lot of answers as to why it has flopped, including some legitimate ones around copyright and whatnot, but none of them speak particularly well to Apple’s future in this space.
So what can Apple do? Honestly, I fear the answer may be nothing. That the company is now simply too big – with far too many leaks, which clearly do not help – to be able to surprise and delight as they once did. One thing I still believe they must do – and I feel this more strongly with each passing event – is go back to doing live events. There's just an energy to them which cannot be matched, no matter how slickly-produced their pre-packaged keynote videos are.
That's clearly not happening with WWDC this year. But perhaps they're saving it for the big event, when it comes to consumer products: the iPhone 17 launch.
I mean clearly, clearly, Tim Cook needs to pull the 'iPhone Air' out of something. Something impossibly thin. And he needs to do that live. And the audience needs to see that live so we can all hear the reaction live.
Still, that's just an iPhone. As will be the foldable one that comes out eventually. Apple can and should nail such products, but they're variations of the now same old song. To truly delight again, I suspect we really will need something new. Something seemingly tangential, like the iPod back in the day. Something fun.
There's hope at the edges here, but I fear that just isn't in Apple's DNA anymore. Their idea of fun is now a "blue" laptop that looks decidedly like every other shade of gray. I don't have an answer, I just aim to shake the snow globe. Some smart glasses? An AI Pin? What would Jony Ive do – what is he doing with... OpenAI?! Maybe stop trying to top the iPhone – which may never happen, but it now certainly seems like it won't if you're simply trying to do that. Think different. Bring back that loving feeling.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Yeah, yeah, perhaps not those people and/or their rightsholders. But come on, can we just have fun for a few minutes before this is declared the end of the world, again?
2 Which seems like another step towards unifying the UI of AI and removing those ridiculous Microsoft Office-like drop-downs.
3 The update to Gemini may even be a big deal, but it's sort of wild how few people are talking about it right now.
4 Even their more "boring" updates are far more interesting that they seem on the surface.
5 Yes, they have done larger events -- though not "Super Bowl"-style -- such as when they rolled out GPT-4o and Voice Mode.