OpenAI Pulls Promotional Materials About Jony Ive Deal (After Trademark Lawsuit) (techcrunch.com) 2
OpenAI appears to have pulled a much-discussed video promoting the friendship between CEO Sam Altman and legendary Apple designer Jony Ive (plus, incidentally, OpenAI's $6.5 billion deal to acquire Ive and Altman's device startup io) from its website and YouTube page. [Though you can still see the original on Archive.org.]
Does that suggest something is amiss with the acquisition, or with plans for Ive to lead design work at OpenAI? Not exactly, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reports [on X.com] that the "deal is on track and has NOT dissolved or anything of the sort." Instead, he said a judge has issued a restraining order over the io name, forcing the company to pull all materials that used it.
Gurman elaborates on the disappearance of the video (and other related marketing materials) in a new article at Bloomberg: Bloomberg reported last week that a judge was considering barring OpenAI from using the IO name due to a lawsuit recently filed by the similarly named IYO Inc., which is also building AI devices. "This is an utterly baseless complaint and we'll fight it vigorously," a spokesperson for Ive said on Sunday.
The video is still viewable on X.com, notes TechCrunch. But visiting the "Sam and Jony" page on OpenAI now pulls up a 404 error message — written in the form of a haiku:
Ghost of code lingers
Blank space now invites wonder
Thoughts begin to soar
by o4-mini-high
Does that suggest something is amiss with the acquisition, or with plans for Ive to lead design work at OpenAI? Not exactly, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who reports [on X.com] that the "deal is on track and has NOT dissolved or anything of the sort." Instead, he said a judge has issued a restraining order over the io name, forcing the company to pull all materials that used it.
Gurman elaborates on the disappearance of the video (and other related marketing materials) in a new article at Bloomberg: Bloomberg reported last week that a judge was considering barring OpenAI from using the IO name due to a lawsuit recently filed by the similarly named IYO Inc., which is also building AI devices. "This is an utterly baseless complaint and we'll fight it vigorously," a spokesperson for Ive said on Sunday.
The video is still viewable on X.com, notes TechCrunch. But visiting the "Sam and Jony" page on OpenAI now pulls up a 404 error message — written in the form of a haiku:
Ghost of code lingers
Blank space now invites wonder
Thoughts begin to soar
by o4-mini-high
Ive's spokesman as incompetent as he is (Score:4, Interesting)
"This is an utterly baseless complaint and we'll fight it vigorously,"
Obviously a judge disagrees, otherwise why would there be a restraining order.
It's all a grift, a way for Altman to funnel billions of dollars of VC to himself.
Re:Ive's spokesman as incompetent as he is (Score:5, Interesting)
Pretty much. I don't know how the financials are structured here (we aren't supposed to know) but the staggering transfer of $6.5 billion to a 1 year start-up with few employees and only a lame concept demo to show for its "intellectual assets" does not look at all like a legitimate business transaction.