OpenAI has just announced some updates to its flagship conversational AI model, ChatGPT, and among them is a new app and interface, featuring the system’s new user-facing personality: a black dot giant.
On stage, CTO Mira Murati hinted at the changes: “We know that these models are getting more and more complex, but we want the interaction experience to actually become more natural, easier and less distracting.” at all on the UI. »
To this end, the new interface is a point, a hole, or a circle, however you choose to perceive it.
In a sense, this is a positive and decisive change, a nod to the minimalism once embraced by Apple. And while the bubbly, saccharine voice is another unsettling step toward pseudanthropy, at least there’s no strange face to accompany it.
The black dot turns into a stylized waveform when ChatGPT speaks, just like the prompt area turns into a waveform when the user speaks. It subtly reinforces the idea of conversation and collaboration, hiding the internal machinery. Wisely, they chose not to turn the dot into a giant eye that watches over you when you use its video analysis capabilities. Instead, it displays a live view of what it “sees.”
In another sense, you’re probably not alone in what this circle within a rectangle reminds you of:
Obviously, OpenAI is not the first, by far, to adopt this motif in AI. Apple’s Siri has been around for a long time, as has Meta’s eponymous AI. So let’s not go too far. (For the record, Google chose a spark for Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude remains disembodied.)
But the stark geometric aesthetic has been taken to the extreme here, a combination of shapes that, like it or not, will always be associated with the prescient, authoritative AI of Stanley Kubrick and Arther C. Clarke. (When ChatGPT can read lips, we’ll know we’re there.)
We could also think of the point as a hole for media and knowledge: all the images and texts in the world compressed into an ultra-dense ball from which no information about its training data can escape (except in court files).
Jokes and overanalysis aside, the decision to go monochrome was probably a smart move, considering the candy-colored alternatives that seem to want to dazzle and comfort you. A black dot is neutral and versatile: adding new features and iconography to indicate its activity is simple and easily recognizable. Aside from the inevitably sinister connotation of a gaping black maw, it’s a good branding move.
You’ll soon see the new dot interface in desktop and mobile apps, although the web interface doesn’t appear to use it yet.
techcrunch
