OpenAI’s Sky: Making Computers Work Themselves

0:00Today on the AI chat podcast, I want to talk about a really big acquisition that just happened And with OpenAI, they've acquired a company called Sky. This is an AI interface for Mac company, which is really interesting because right now we have a brand new product from OpenAI, which is their agent running in their Atlas browser. And essentially it's taking action for you. It's doing a whole bunch of stuff. And it feels like this acquisition of Sky is trying to do something very similar. But there's a whole bunch of kind of weird backstory to this company where Sam Altman actually owns shares in the company.

0:35So he technically would be getting compensated for this. The company doesn't have a live product. No one's actually tried it. There's a bunch of weird stuff that I'm going to be getting into on this show today. But before I do, I wanted to mention that if you want to get access to the top 20 different AI models I talk about all the time on this show, in one place for 20 bucks a month, I would love for you to try out my startup, which is AIvox.ai. We have a playground on here where you get all of the top AI tools, Anthropics, you know, you get Opus, you get Sonnet, you get everything from OpenAI.

1:07You also get Perplexity Models, and you get Grok from XAI, and you get a bunch of good image models. And of course, if you want to do audio, you have 11 labs. So all of that's 20 bucks a month on one platform. If you don't want to have to pay subscriptions for, you know, dozens of different services and platforms, go check out AIbox.ai. All right, let's get into this acquisition from OpenAI of Sky. So OpenAI put out a big blog post detailing essentially what they were doing here. Notably, I don't know if this is on purpose, but in all their blog posts, they always have mdashes, which makes you feel like they use chat to write them.

1:44But you know, that's probably irrelevant. This is what the opening statement of the blog post said, then I'll get into the acquisition of it. They said, AI progress isn't only about advancing, advancing intelligence, it's about unlocking it through interfaces that understand context, adapt your intent and work seamlessly. That's why we're excited to share that OpenAI has acquired, you know, Sky, basically. You know, it's called Software Applications Incorporated. Very generic, but it's basically the company that makes Sky. They say Sky is a powerful natural language interface for Mac with Sky.

2:14AI works alongside you, whether you're writing, planning, coding, or managing your day. Okay, so for people watching over on YouTube or Spotify, I'll show like a little demo of basically what the platform is capable of doing. they released a video which is interesting because this video came out about four months ago it has 10 ,000 views so it's got some decent views only has 32 comments and so those views could have just been from running an ad on this they say it's an AI that gets things done on your Mac they only have 200 subscribers so like this is feels like a very undercover company it doesn't have a lot of social media footprint doesn't have a lot of you know big fans anyways they released this demo video, which is basically they show on Mac, iMessage is open, and they show someone taking a screenshot of the iMessage, uploading it to this little bubble that sits on the side of your Mac, and they say, you know, based off of the screenshot, they're like, add dinner at Mojoto at eight o 'clock to my calendar, so they're telling it to do something.

3:14Now, what's interesting about this in particular, if you read the comments on this, because then, you know, the little Sky AI thing goes and does that, it's very much like the chat GPT on the side of Atlas, where you tell it to do something that takes control of your screen and it can go and accomplish tasks so it feels very similar to that in this case i think it natively interfaces with a lot of like apple products like their like their calendar it then says you know like go research like a bar to go get drinks at and it's like going and doing research on google maps and then it's like and then and then message the people in the group so that it messages back to the group chat to go do it again it feels like you're sitting there watching um you're sitting there like actually watching it and then telling it what to do, which I don't really get what the point of that is really other than just doing it yourself.

3:59It's kind of reminds me of how on OpenAI's Atlas browser, you almost have to babysit it. I know some people are probably yelling at me being like, no, you don't. I literally on a side computer tab right next to me right now, which isn't the screen share is not running on this, but I have basically my MacBook is open. And on, you know, the computer itself, it's running one particular kind of like automation on atlas and over here i'm like recording the podcast and the reason why i have a whole nother thing over there is because depending on what task you give atlas it says like um it's like this is a sensitive task so i actually have it going to responding to an email like to all of my emails on one particular email for my podcast network it's one that people pitch to have guests on so i have these different stipulations about what guests can and can't come onto the show.

4:48And so I have Atlas going through and weeding people out basically and sending rejection or acceptance emails to like these PR firms that pitch people to come on my show. In any case, apparently if it's sending emails, that's a sensitive thing and it can't do that task unless you are watching it, which watching it just means it has to be like the main thing open on your screen, which is really annoying. Luckily, I just have multiple monitors going. So I have like one full monitor doing that over on the side and then at the other monitor, I'm recording this podcast and can be doing it in the background.

5:18The reason why I bring that up is because yes, you like, yes, that's a reality that sort of can work, but it's quite annoying. I would rather just be able to have that run in the background on my main monitor, not have to have my laptop open up on my desk, which is just kind of annoying. Or I guess multiple monitors, you could do something like that. So it doesn't really like I think opening I wants you literally watching it. But if you're literally watching it, what's the point of not just doing the task yourself, in my opinion. So all that to say, that's kind of what sky feels like from from what I saw So enough trash talking.

5:47It is useful. And the comments bring up a really interesting point. Someone said, pretty sweet. Apple's been trying to do this for the last three years and is miserably behind. Thanks for filling in the gap until Apple buys your company. Well, turns out Apple did not buy their company. Opening, I bought their company. But it's crazy to me because this is only, you know, like there's only 32 comments on this. A lot of people are quite, quite supportive. Someone said, cool, but isn't this almost exactly what Apple's trying to do with Apple intelligence? I look forward to seeing how Sky differentiates from Apple's AI, if it ever ships.

6:17That's a good point. There's an em dash in that comment. So I wonder if that was just a ChadGPT AI writing that. Who knows? Regardless, the point is, it seems interesting, but it seems like it's very similar to what OpenAI is already doing with Atlas, where it takes control of your browser. The difference here, and I do think this is valuable, is it actually takes control of your computer. And I think Microsoft has a really good opportunity to do this with all of their co-pilot features and tools because they own the operating system. the Windows operating system, so they could get AI to like work on the computer level.

6:47I think OpenAI wants a little piece of that, obviously, without their own hardware, their own operating system. They're kind of like at the mercy of whether or not they can get their software in front of people. So I think this is an interesting way where they can actually take control of the computer. Now, why is that important? Because you can access the photos, you can access the calendar, you can access all of these native apps on the computer that you might not have permission for the files on the computer you can access and at least screenshots and stuff. So you don't always have access to that in the browser using something like Atlas.

7:17So it's kind of like another level. Now, I think all that makes sense, basically, right? You could see the direction opening eyes going with Atlas. Maybe this is another angle that they have a little bit more, but why acquire this company in particular? Here's a couple of interesting things about the company. I'll give you a quote from their CEO, and then let's get into what the company is doing and where it's at today. So the CEO is Aerie Weinstein. And he said, we've always wanted computers to be more powerful, customizable and intuitive with LLMs. We can finally put the pieces together. That's why we built Sky and AI experience that floats over your desktop to help you think and create.

7:52We're thrilled to join OpenAI to bring that vision to hundreds of millions of people. Okay. The thing is, this product has not launched yet. So I do think that that is very interesting. um the sky founders i will say they've had a bunch of exits in the past um weinstein and conrad previously co-founded workflow which sold to apple so if they sold a company to apple they went and worked at apple after that happened and then it appears they went and picked up uh another fellow apple employee to come work with them which is kim beverette who's a senior product manager at apple and she basically worked there for 10 years with safari webkit privacy messages mail phone facetime SharePlay, right?

8:31So she worked with all of the Apple infrastructure and tools and now is building a product that goes and interfaces with them and other companies. So honestly, that makes a lot of sense. One thing that I do think is interesting, Apple intelligence is notoriously behind right now. And so the comments that we read on YouTube do sort of make sense. You know, a lot of people argue that Apple values privacy. If you go, there's a whole article on TechCrunch about this, and they're like, you know, the reason why Apple's so far behind is because they value privacy. okay whatever i i don't really believe that what's interesting about this deal is that open i never said how much they've acquired this company for uh they previously raised 6.5 million dollars but some of the investors of that original 6.5 million dollars were ceo sam altman and also the ceo figma who is dylan field um there's a bunch of other places context ventures still uh installation capital right there's a bunch of big places but like sam was one of the investors so essentially by opening i buying a company that he personally invested in he personally makes money um and i think opening i did disclose this they they're like yeah sam altman has a passive interest in this company through an investment fund but like i don't know i have never heard of this company before aside from the 10 000 views i guess they got on youtube and the 32 comments they got on youtube this isn't a company that i've ever heard anyone talk about before maybe it went viral on x a day that i wasn't using it so i missed it i don't know i don't know what the backstory is but basically not a very big company.

9:57Sam Altman is the investor. How do I hear about them? They don't have a launch product. So anyways, I mean, I'm happy that I guess they'll be working on something, but it's possible Sam Altman is acquiring this because it's good for his portfolio. Who knows? All right. I'm not saying that that's anything like nefarious or illegal, but it just seems to be an interesting point that I would definitely want to bring up. So overall, I think that OpenAI, you know, on their whole blog post is kind of upfront about this. There's like this whole disclosure statement on the bottom of OpenAI's blog post.

10:33They're like, disclosure, an investment fund associated with Sam Altman held a passive investment in this, whatever. Okay. Associated with him, like heavily associated with him. Sam Altman personally invested in it, but whatever. I'm excited for what they're able to build here. Nick Turley, who's a VP and head of chat GPT said, quote, we're building a future where chat GPT doesn't just respond to your prompts. It helps you get things done. Sky's deep integration with the Mac with the Mac accelerates our vision of bringing AI directly into the tools people use every day. I will be honest and I'll give them their flowers in a sense that they brought a really, a really awesome player over from Apple who'd worked there for 10 years on all of the Apple's, all of Apple's like main core apps on the Mac.

11:14And so bringing her in and then having this tie into all of those seems like a really good move. And I think they'll be able to do some interesting things. I'm sure people with Windows computers will be complaining about, you know, the fact that this is only on Mac. Hopefully it gets there to Windows someday if Microsoft doesn't, you know, fight them off and never let them do this. But at the end of the day, this will be an interesting company to follow. Wanted to bring it up. And thank you so much, everyone, for tuning in. I will catch you guys all in the next episode.