OpenAI is giving its chatbot a sweeping makeover – aiming to turn ChatGPT into a “superapp” that features coding tools and AI agents that can perform simultaneous tasks for users.
The overhaul comes after details surfaced in April about how OpenAI fell short of internal revenue and user targets ahead of a potential IPO later this year — raising concerns about whether it will be able to offset massive spending on AI.
The San Francisco-based company is facing increased competition with rival Anthropic to win lucrative business customers, according to a report in the Financial Times. Meanwhile, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier this month sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, alleging the AI giant’s tools stoke violence and self-harm by putting profit over safety.
Last valued at $850 billion, OpenAI is trying to polish up its finances and pave a clear path to becoming profitable ahead of its planned IPO. Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI — owned by SpaceX — are also racing toward public listings.
OpenAI’s transformation of ChatGPT marks the biggest changes yet since the chatbot was released in 2022 and ignited the artificial intelligence frenzy. It reflects the company’s belief that autonomous agents, which can organize calendars and book travel, will become more of a money maker than its chatbot.
“Chat is dead,” one senior OpenAI employee told the FT.
The changes – set to begin rolling out in coming weeks – are intended to amplify OpenAI’s coding product Codex, which allows users to write code and create software based on simple instructions. In recent months, OpenAI’s software coding capabilities have increasingly been perceived as lagging behind Anthropic’s Claude.
“What we’re building towards is where you have your own personal agent that is capable of helping you … across everything in your life, be it personally or at work,” Thibault Sottiaux, who leads OpenAI’s core product and platform, told the FT.
Sottiaux added: “You can connect through it on your mobile, desktop or web. When you’re in the car, you can talk to it.”
OpenAI is redesigning ChatGPT’s interface to encourage users to use the new tools. The idea is to direct non-paying users to higher-value products. It’s adding new prompts and features that direct users towards coding tools, image generation and applications built by partners such as Canva and Booking.com, per the FT report.
OpenAI thinks its AI models will be able to automatically understand users’ intentions and thus eventually plans to ditch the ChatGPT’s traditional prompts.
Most Codex users are paying customers, while the majority of consumers use ChatGPT for free. Meanwhile, two million businesses make up about 40% of OpenAI’s revenue, according to the report. OpenAI expects that share to rise to 50% by year-end.
