- A new leak says OpenAI is making a wearable to take on Apple’s AirPods
- Codenamed ‘Sweetpea’, the device acts as an earpiece for ChatGPT
- It will supposedly sit behind your ear, not inside it
OpenAI may be best known for its ChatGPT chatbot, but we also know that the artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer has teamed up with former Apple design guru Jony Ive to develop a suite of wearable products — reportedly including an AI-powered pen — all powered by its AI algorithms. Now, a new revelation has shed light on exactly what OpenAI could be doing in its secret labs.
That’s because a new leak on X has revealed a mysterious new OpenAI device codenamed ‘Sweetpea’. This is reportedly an AI-powered behind-the-ear wearable aimed at Apple’s popular AirPods earphones.
Don’t expect them to look like your standard set of in-ear headphones, though. Instead, the leaker – who goes by the name Smart Pikachu – claims that much of each Sweetpea module will be worn behind the ear. This can make them look more like a set of hearing aids than a traditional pair of headphones.
The behind-the-ear segment could include the product’s battery and processor, with the advantage that placing them in this way could enable the use of a larger battery. Given that the AI unit will always be on and ready to help you, longer time on a single charge can be a real selling point.
Aside from that, Smart Pikachu says Sweetpea will have a custom chip to “replace iPhone actions by commanding Siri.” The timing is fortuitous, as Apple just brought Google Gemini on board to help drive the upcoming AI overhaul of Siri, meaning this could be another way Apple’s virtual assistant gains new functionality in the future.
And as suggested by Wareable, the Sweetpea image that Smart Pikachu included contained references to an ‘ultrasound transmitter’ and signal pickup sensors. This, Wareable notes, means the device “could offer environmental sensing or contextual awareness rather than simply acting as a passive Bluetooth receiver for ChatGPT.”
When can we see Sweetpea? Smart Pikachu expects the release date to be “close to September” 2026, with 40-50 million units expected to ship. That’s an ambitious goal for OpenAI’s first-ever wearable, but given ChatGPT’s success, it might be possible.
But be warned, as the leaker states that the price can be high. That’s because the price of Sweetpea’s materials and components is close to the price of a smartphone, with the added factor that its “unit function [are] said to be stronger.”
Still, Sweetpea is in line with a trend we noticed at CES 2026, where a growing number of companies were pushing AI-first wearables as the next big thing. Perhaps OpenAI’s Sweetpea project will finally be the device to make the breakthrough and take these products mainstream.
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