Last week, OpenAI released its first hardware — a fancy little keyboard built to work with ChatGPT. Developed in collaboration with specialty keyboard designer Work Louder, the Micro is essentially a workplace innovation that many tech enthusiasts will love, but may leave everyone a little surprised.
OpenAI’s entry into the hardware market has not been without drama. A few weeks ago, Apple sued the artificial intelligence lab and accused it of commercial theft, in what is sure to be a long legal battle. Meanwhile, news of another shrewd home product in development at OpenAI also raised eyebrows, as the purported device – which is said to connect to ChatGPT – was reportedly developed by former Apple engineers.
Until the legal battle ends and OpenAI’s broader hardware ambitions materialize, the only thing the startup has to offer is the Micro, a tiny, funky keyboard clearly designed to delight the tech industry’s coding monkeys.
OpenAI sent a Micro test unit to TechCrunch. The first large thing you notice when you initially exploit the keyboard is that it’s a tiny, sturdy device — so much so that if the AI accessory doesn’t work, it can easily double as a paperweight. Another thing you may notice (and I’m not only one can highlight it)is that the packaging – a pristine white box with a sleek, spotless aesthetic – is nicely branded with the Apple code. Make of it what you want.
The keyboard layout features six matte “agent” keys at the top of the keyboard that can be customized to perform specific tasks within ChatGPT or its Codex agent coding tool. Below are the six command keys that you can exploit to control these programs. You can pair your Micro device with your computer using Bluetooth or a USB cable.
Perhaps the most convenient thing the Micro offers is the voice dictation button – which means you simply tell the app what you want to do and it will do the work on your behalf. Just hold down the dictation button and start speaking. Once you’re done, click the “submit” button next to it to submit your request.
You can customize your Micro keyboard within ChatGPT itself, where the Micro tab allows you to adjust everything from the brightness of the key featherlight to the specific commands and designs you want to associate with those keys.
Die-hard developers – the device’s actual target audience – haven’t quite caught on to this. Redditor reviews have been largely negative, with one Reddit user calling it “joke not a real product” and others say that earnest developers won’t touch it. A review by the smaller, independent store Aftermath was even more sharplystating that the $230 price tag is tough to justify when compared to cheaper DIY products and off-the-shelf alternatives. (Title of this review: “OpenAI’s expensive macropad seems designed to piss me off on purpose.”)
It’s definitely the case that fresh users may need some time to learn how the Micro works and what to do with it.
Once I figured out how to program the keyboard to my liking, I found it to be really fun. You can assign different ChatGPT sessions to specific keys, allowing you to easily switch between all the different projects. If you combine this with a dictation button, the whole experience becomes much more capable and enjoyable.
But there is still a learning curve. Micro buttons are color coded. White means the agent is idle, blue means it is thinking, green means the task is complete, and red means an error has occurred. You need to remember this and also remember which specific designs are encoded for each key.
The large question is whether the Micro Keyboard is functionally easier to exploit than regular laptop work. In compact: why would I spend a week learning how to program and exploit this device when I already know how to exploit my computer’s mouse and keyboard?
Ultimately, your experience with Micro will depend largely on how often you exploit ChatGPT. Since I don’t exploit AI very often on a daily basis, I’m probably not its target audience.
That said, if you’re an advanced ChatGPT user, have $230 to spare, and like vintage hardware with clicky buttons, the Micro probably isn’t the worst purchase you can make – it might even brighten your day a little.