In a cryptic post, OpenAI appears to be pondering an orb.

Over the weekend, the official X account for the company's AI chatbot ChatGPT posted a black-and-white image showing a large blacked-out orb over what appears to be rolling hills filled in with smaller, grey balls underneath — and no context at all besides that.

Given the complete lack of an explanation, we can't say for sure how or why it was created. But that didn't stop users on X to hazard a guess.

From suggestions that it might be a "torment nexus" or related to "Roko's Basilisk," to folks pointing out how closely it resembles the "Damnation" card from "Magic: The Gathering," theories ran rampant.

Perhaps the biggest clue, however, is the logo that accompanied the release of ChatGPT's voice mode last year.

As TechCrunch reported last May, the interface of the voice-activated version of OpenAI's flagship chatbot features — you guessed it — a large black dot, which morphs into smaller ovals that act as waveforms when it responds aloud.

A few months later, the company dropped an "advanced" version of its voice mode, which features flowing blue and white inside the dot instead of the standard inky black.

According to former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, who spoke during the company's Spring Event last year, the goal was for users "not to focus on the UI at all." That may be somewhat difficult, however, given that standard voice mode's black dot looks a whole lot like HAL 9000, the murderous AI from "2001: A Space Odyssey" that also existed as a circle inside a rectangle.

For us, meanwhile, the first thing that came to mind was WorldCoin, the strange crypto/biometric project launched by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman two summers ago that used a large silver orb to scan eyeballs in exchange for a bit of bespoke cryptocurrency.

Now banned in multiple countries (including the United States), WorldCoin was fascinating enough to us at Futurism that this reporter had her eyeball scanned by the sphere in July 2023 — and did so without getting any crypto in exchange, because American financial regulators don't allow WorldCoin to trade in the US.

We're still not entirely sure what exactly OpenAI is suggesting. Is the company about to drop an update for the standard voice mode of ChatGPT? Does the image suggest an imminent UI change?

Or could this mean that ChatGPT is going to get better at making ASCII art of orbs? As of right now, that's still proving to be quite a struggle.

We've reached out to OpenAI to ask what's up with this strange orb, but we have yet to hear back.

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