Isa Fulford, the analysis lead for OpenAI’s new ChatGPT agent, wanted to order a bunch of cupcakes, so she requested the AI instrument to do it for her. “I used to be very particular about what I needed, and it was numerous cupcakes,” she says. “That one took virtually an hour—nevertheless it was simpler than me doing it myself, as a result of I did not need to do it.”
OpenAI has launched a brand new agent for ChatGPT that makes use of a digital browser to finish duties and may generate downloadable recordsdata, particularly PowerPoint shows and Excel spreadsheets. Whereas not a full substitute for the Microsoft suite of office instruments, the options included on this agent from OpenAI might obviate some customers’ reliance on Microsoft’s enterprise software program. The 2 corporations are longtime companions and at present in contract negotiations over ongoing entry to OpenAI’s fashions.
The discharge is a part of OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to show its practically three-year-old chatbot right into a money-making product. No small feat, regardless of the instrument’s tens of millions of customers, once you issue within the prices to coach and run highly effective AI fashions in addition to the exorbitant salaries required to retain top-tier employees members.
An agent, on this context, refers to an AI instrument that is ready to—or no less than makes an attempt to—navigate third-party software program and web sites and make selections on its journey to finish digital duties, following an preliminary set of directions from the person. “Agent” is the buzziest of buzzwords proper now for corporations trying to promote generative AI instruments, particularly these with an eye fixed on enterprise prospects.
“We’ve tried to construct a product with an entire lot of enterprise use circumstances,” says Yash Kumar, the product lead on the ChatGPT agent. Along with its file-generating capabilities, the agent can fill out on-line kinds, use a programming terminal, and make calls to public APIs to on-line providers like Google Drive and SharePoint.
This isn’t the primary agent launched by OpenAI in 2025. The brand new ChatGPT agent brings collectively features of OpenAI’s web-browsing Operator and its long-processing deep analysis options, each launched earlier this yr and regarded to be brokers by the startup. “I used to be on the deep analysis staff, and Yash was on the Operator staff,” Fulford says. “We realized that the 2 merchandise are very complementary, and mainly determined to mix groups.” The ChatGPT agent can change between interacting with a visible browser, the place it may possibly click on round like Operator does, and a text-based browser, the place it may possibly course of a great deal of web sites like deep analysis does.
The rollout of the ChatGPT agent is coming first to Professional, Plus, and Workforce subscribers, beginning at this time for Professional customers. Enterprise and Schooling subs will doubtless obtain entry to the characteristic later in the summertime. At launch, Professional customers are usually capped at 400 agent prompts a month, with 40 prompts allowed for the opposite tiers of paying customers. It’s unclear when this characteristic will roll out free of charge customers of ChatGPT.
