SAN FRANCISCO - The rise of artificial intelligence has profoundly altered the technology world in recent years, upending how software is created, how people search for information, and how images and videos can be generated -- all with a few prompts to a chatbot.

What the technology has yet to do, though, is find a preferred form in a physical, everyday gadget. AI largely remains the domain of an app on phones, despite efforts by startups and others to move it into devices.

Now OpenAI, the world’s leading AI lab, is taking a crack at that riddle.

On Wednesday, Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, said the company was paying $6.5 billion to buy IO, a 1-year-old startup created by Jony Ive, a former top Apple executive who designed the iPhone. The all-stock deal, which effectively unites Silicon Va

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