OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent Launched, Can Perform Complex Tasks on a Virtual Computer

OpenAI released a new artificial intelligence (AI) agent, which will be baked into the company's chatbot, on Thursday. Dubbed ChatGPT Agent, it is a general-purpose agent which gets its own virtual computer to browse the web and find information, as well as an integrated development environment (IDE) for coding. The San Francisco-based AI firm said that ChatGPT Agent is essentially the unification of the Operator agent and the Deep Research function. The new agentic capability is available to the paid subscribers within the chatbot's web and desktop interface.

ChatGPT Agent Can Complete Tasks on Its Own Desktop

The AI firm unveiled the new AI agent in a live stream. This is the company's third agentic offering (after Deep Research and Operator) and second independent agent. OpenAI said that ChatGPT Agent comes with “Operator's⁠ ability to interact with websites, deep research's⁠ skill in synthesising information, and ChatGPT's intelligence and conversational fluency.”

ChatGPT Agent can now engage with websites and perform actions such as clicking on buttons, filtering through content, and gathering only the required information. Since the agent is integrated within the chatbot, users can go from having conversations to requesting specific actions without leaving the chat. This also allows the agent to gain more context.

The agent comes with a suite of tools that it uses to autonomously perform actions, the company said in a blog post. It has a visual browser that the agent uses to interact with the web, a text-based browser to quickly gather information, a terminal, and direct application programming interface (API) access.

OpenAI said that ChatGPT Agent can also make use of connectors to connect to third-party apps such as Gmail and GitHub. In case a website requires the agent to log in, the user can take over and add credentials on the agent's behalf. Notably, all of these tools are provided to the agent via a virtual computer. When it works on a task, users can see a small window in the chat interface to understand what it is up to.

All of this capability is aimed at handling much more complex tasks than previously released agents. The AI firm highlighted that users can ask the ChatGPT Agent to convert screenshots or dashboards into presentations with editable vector elements, rearranging meetings, planning and booking event locations, adding new data to existing spreadsheets without losing the formatting, and more. The agent can also create an early retirement plan by finding local tax laws and personalised investment strategies, plan and book travel itineraries, parties, and even find and book appointments with specialists.

ChatGPT agent is currently available to the Plus, Team, and Pro subscribers. While Pro users have already received access to it, others are expected to get it in the next few days. Additionally, the agent will be expanded to the Enterprise and Education tiers in the coming weeks. Notably, Pro users have a monthly rate limit of 400 messages, while other tiers have a monthly limit of 40 messages.

The feature will not be available in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland, but OpenAI stated that it is working to enable it in that region as well. With the launch of ChatGPT Agent, the AI firm is also planning to shut down Operator in the coming weeks.