Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Not too long ago, I wrote that AI agents were the future of AI: tools that could carry out tasks for you, like ordering groceries or booking meetings. OpenAI’s latest launch makes that reality appear a bit closer.
On Thursday, during a live stream, OpenAI launched a ChatGPT agent, which the company claims can handle complex tasks for you from start to finish. Some examples OpenAI provided were looking at your calendar and writing a briefing based on your upcoming events, or even planning and buying ingredients for a meal you were looking to cook.
How it works
OpenAI’s most cutting-edge features, including Operator and deep research, gave the public a taste of the company’s agentic capabilities and now power this new agent mode. Operator, which launched in January, was created to interact directly with a web browser to carry out actions for you, while deep research is an agentic feature that can search the web for you and compose a detailed report in minutes that would otherwise take humans hours.
After noticing that many of the queries being fed to Operator were a better fit for Deep Research, OpenAI decided to combine the two in this new experience — and add a few new tools.
For starters, the ChatGPT agent uses a visual browser that interacts with the web through a graphical user interface (GUI), a text-based browser, a terminal, and direct API access, according to the release. It also uses ChatGPT connectors, a feature that allows users to connect apps like Gmail and GitHub to ChatGPT so it can pull relevant information to fulfill your request.
With all of those different sources of information, ChatGPT is able to reason through which is the best for the task at hand and pull information accordingly. This processing is done using its own virtual computer and distinguishes between reasoning and action based on human instruction, which allows it to retain context while pulling from multiple tools.
ChatGPT Agent is flexible and steerable. It allows you to interrupt a request mid-process and collaborate with it to give clearer instructions that better suit your desired outcome. Even though it will use the new information, it won’t lose track of the old one, allowing users to take advantage of added context. It will also ask you for further details and classifications needed to carry out the task at hand.
What can you do with ChatGPT’s agent?
The possibilities are endless. You can automate tasks as simple as scheduling an appointment for yourself at your favorite salon, or as complex as updating a spreadsheet with new financial data while keeping the formatting you want.
If all goes according to plan, future possibilities like having AI book a trip for you or rearrange your meeting schedule can now be made possible through OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent. Ultimately, only time and testing will tell if that will be executable as smoothly as it is being advertised, but in theory, it should be as simple as you asking what you want to be done conversationally, and AI handling the rest.
Security
Of course, an AI that can access your personal information and take action for you naturally brings up security and privacy concerns. OpenAI addresses this head-on, offering one whole page within the vlog post dedicated to these concerns in addition to the usual model card.OpenAI says it has added safeguards for challenges uncovered in the Operator research preview, such as handling sensitive information on the live web and limited terminal network access.
The company says it has also taken into account the specific risks that agents are exposed to, such as adversarial manipulation through prompt injection, by adding additional safeguards.The company those warn that even though it can do a range of complex tasks well, there is the opportunity for it to make mistakes. For example, some limitations at the moment include creating slideshows. For a full understanding of limitations and security risks, it is worth taking a look at the blog post and model card.
Who can access the ChatGPT agent, and how?
Unlike OpenAI’s most cutting-edge features, which are typically limited to the highest-paying users upon launch, OpenAI is making ChatGPT Agent available to Pro, Plus, and Team users. Pro users will get access by the end of the day, while Plus and Team users will have it within the next few days, and enterprise and education users within the coming weeks.
Pro users have the most bandwidth, at 400 messages per month, while other paid users get 40 messages monthly with the option to extend via flexible credit-based options.
To activate the feature, users simply select “agent mode” from the tool’s dropdown during a conversation with the chatbot.
