OpenAI announced several updates to its flagship conversational AI model, ChatGPT. Among them are new apps and interfaces featuring the system’s new user-facing personality: a giant black dot.
On stage, Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati hinted at the changes: ”
So the new interface will be either a point, a hole, or a circle. It doesn’t matter how you perceive it.
In some ways, this is a positive and decisive change, a nod to the minimalism that Apple once embraced. The cheerful, saccharine voice is also an awkward step toward pseudo-humanity, but at least there’s no creepy face to go with it.
Just as the prompt area turns into a prompt area when the user speaks, the black dot turns into a stylized waveform when ChatGPT speaks. It subtly enhances the concept of conversation and collaboration and hides the inner workings. Wisely, they chose not to turn the dot into a giant eye watching you when you’re using the video analysis feature. Instead, you’ll see a live view of what you’re “seeing.”
In another sense, you’re probably not the only one whose circle inside a rectangle reminds you of:
Clearly, OpenAI is not the first to incorporate this motif into AI. Apple’s Siri, like Meta’s eponymous AI, has long had a round shape. So let’s not read too much into it. (For the record, Google chose Gemini’s brilliance, but Anthropic’s Claude remains disembodied.)
But the strict geometric aesthetic is taken to the extreme here, with shapes that, like it or not, will always evoke the visionary and domineering A.I.s of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. It is a combination of. (If ChatGPT can read lips, you know it’s possible.)
You can also think of this dot as a media and knowledge blockhole. All the images and text in the world are compressed into a super-dense ball from which no information about training data can escape (except in court filings).
All joking and over-analysis aside, the decision to go black and white was probably a wise one, given the candy-colored options that look dazzlingly soothing. Black dots are neutral and versatile. Add new features and icons to show that the activity is simple and easily recognizable. It’s a good move for the brand, except for the unavoidably ominous connotations of a gaping black mouth.
The new dot interface will soon appear on the desktop and mobile apps, but it doesn’t appear to be used on the web interface yet.