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The real reason why OpenAI spent $6.5 billion on Jony Ive’s AI startup

OpenAI’s decision to buy Jony Ive’s gadget company, io, is about distribution.

Getting ChatGPT and other OpenAI models and products into the hands of users — that’s what really counts. Without that direct relationship, these products won’t be used as much, or it will cost a lot to get the offerings to consumers indirectly.


Sam Altman is working with Ive to secure direct user access, showing how distribution is becoming more important than technology in the AI race.

Fuel your creativity with new generative media models and tools

Today, we’re announcing our newest generative media models, which mark significant breakthroughs. These models create breathtaking images, videos and music, empowering artists to bring their creative vision to life. They also power amazing tools for everyone to express themselves.

Veo 3 and Imagen 4, our newest video and image generation models, push the frontier of media generation, with their groundbreaking new capabilities. We’re also expanding access to Lyria 2, giving musicians more tools to create music. Finally, we’re inviting visual storytellers to try Flow, our new AI filmmaking tool. Using Google DeepMind’s most advanced models, Flow lets you weave cinematic films with more sophisticated control of characters, scenes and styles, to bring your story to life.

We’ve partnered closely with the creative industries — filmmakers, musicians, artists, YouTube creators — to help shape these models and products responsibly and to give creators new tools to realize the possibilities of AI in their art.

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