Designing Presence: How Jony Ive Is Building a Human-Centered Future for AI
In today’s business climate, where consumers are not only buyers but content creators, critics, influencers, and stakeholders, a brand is not simply how a company identifies itself, it’s how the world defines it.
In an age where artificial intelligence is no longer a research fantasy but a daily tool, the question has shifted from what AI can do to how humans experience it. Despite exponential advancements in large language models and generative algorithms, our interactions with these systems often remain cold, mechanical, and transactional. The very interfaces that connect us to AI are stuck in legacy paradigms, flat screens, command prompts, and sterile UI elements.
This is the context in which OpenAI’s decision to bring Jony Ive into its inner circle must be understood. Ive, the design visionary who helped create the iMac, iPod, and iPhone, has joined forces with Sam Altman and team not to refine AI’s function, but to redefine its presence. As he once said of his design philosophy, "What we make describes our values. It describes our preoccupations." With OpenAI, he is now bringing that ethos to the most transformative technology of our time.
A Shift from Engineering to Experience
Jony Ive is synonymous with product excellence. From the iMac to the iPhone, his design legacy shaped the modern consumer relationship with technology. But contrary to popular belief, Ive’s work was never about aesthetic minimalism, it was about emotional coherence.
What made Apple products iconic wasn’t their form, but their feel. The click wheel. The breathing sleep light. The subtle haptics. These were not flourishes, they were emotional touchpoints.
Designers call this affordance: the intuitive sense of how to interact with something before you even engage with it. Ive mastered this in the physical world. The opportunity now is to bring that mastery to the digital presence of AI.
And that’s precisely what OpenAI is betting on, not a better shell, but a better self for AI.
As Sam Altman put it in a closed-door strategy meeting: “The next big leap isn’t faster responses, it’s real presence. We don’t just need AI to be smart. We need it to feel.”
From Product to Paradigm: What Ive Is Actually Building
Contrary to headlines, Jony Ive is not designing a single hardware product for OpenAI. The scope is broader, and more ambitious.
According to insiders, Ive has been tasked with rethinking the entire interaction model between humans and general-purpose AI. This includes:
Emotional Interface Design: Creating visual, auditory, and tactile cues that make AI interactions more empathetic and less mechanical.
Ambient Computing Environments: Moving AI out of screens and into space, akin to how Nest reimagined thermostats as objects you live with, not just use.
Presence-Based OS Concepts: Systems that respond to mood, rhythm, and non-verbal intent, rather than text prompts alone.
This isn’t just new hardware. It’s a new language for computing. And perhaps most importantly, it’s a strategic shift away from the current paradigm of prompt-driven intelligence, toward what design theorists call relational intelligence, the ability of a system to understand context, intent, and emotional nuance.
Strategic Implications: Why Design Is Now Core Infrastructure
The implications of this move are profound, and extend beyond OpenAI.
For decades, design in the tech industry was often an afterthought, brought in to “skin” products after engineering was complete. This separation worked when interfaces were static and single-purpose. But AI changes the equation. Because the interface is the experience.
As AI tools become general-purpose and embedded across platforms, the user experience will define trust, adoption, and differentiation. This is no longer a matter of aesthetics, it’s about cognitive load, ethical engagement, and emotional safety.
Consider three immediate strategic reasons design is becoming core:
Trust & Adoption: Research by Accenture found that 64% of consumers are more likely to use AI-powered tools if they feel emotionally understood by the interface.
Differentiation: As model performance converges across vendors (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind), the differentiator will be how people experience AI, not just what it can do.
Regulatory Alignment: UX plays a critical role in ensuring ethical AI. Clear affordances, transparent decision pathways, and emotionally coherent interactions reduce risk and support responsible deployment.
This is why OpenAI’s move isn’t a PR stunt. It’s a narrative shift: from model-centric to human-centric AI.
A Return to Creative Tension: Can Altman Be Ive’s “Jobs”?
The open question is not whether Jony Ive can still design, his track record is unimpeachable. The real question is whether OpenAI can curate that design into strategic coherence.
Apple’s golden era was defined by the creative tension between Ive and Steve Jobs. Jobs wasn’t a designer. He was a taste-enforcer. A ruthless editor. A narrative architect who said “no” more than anyone in Silicon Valley history.
This constraint made the design work sing.
The question now is: can Sam Altman play that role? Can he prioritize coherence over scope? Presence over power? A single well-designed moment over ten MVPs?
The answer will define not just this partnership, but the shape of human-AI interaction for the next decade.
Ryan Edwards, CAMINO5 | Co-Founder
Ryan Edwards is the Co-Founder and Head of Strategy at CAMINO5, a consultancy focused on digital strategy and consumer journey design. With over 25 years of experience across brand, tech, and marketing innovation, he’s led initiatives for Fortune 500s including Oracle, NBCUniversal, Sony, Disney, and Kaiser Permanente.
Ryan’s work spans brand repositioning, AI-integrated workflows, and full-funnel strategy. He helps companies cut through complexity, regain clarity, and build for what’s next.
Connect on LinkedIn: ryanedwards2