OpenAI is preparing to launch a new feature that may mark the latest leap forward in the artificial intelligence revolution.
On Thursday, the company unveiled ChatGPT Agent, a tool designed to carry out tasks independently using its own built-in “virtual computer.”
In a briefing and demo with The Verge, Yash Kumar and Isa Fulford — product lead and research lead on ChatGPT Agent, respectively — said it’s powered by a new model that OpenAI developed specifically for the product.
The company said the new tool can perform tasks like looking at a user’s calendar to brief them on upcoming client meetings, planning and purchasing ingredients to make a family breakfast, and creating a slide deck based on its analysis of competing companies.
To develop the new tool, the company combined the teams behind both Operator and Deep Research into one unified team. Kumar and Fulford told The Verge that the new team is made up of between 20 and 35 people across product and research.
Despite stiff competition from the likes of Google’s Gemini, Elon Musk’s Grok and China’s DeepSeek, OpenAI remains the most popular and advanced large language model currently on the market.
ChatGPT already offers an incredible range of features including a voice mode, real-time web browsing, image and video creation, coding and intepreting images.
However, there are also growing concerns that these platforms may already be having a detrimental affect on the human physche.
Last month, an alarming study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found hat extensive use of services ChatGPT may be rotting our brains.
MIT Media Lab researchers conducted a study in which participants were asked to write SAT-style essays and split into three groups: one used ChatGPT, another used Google, and a third relied solely on their own knowledge — the “brain-only” group. EEG machines tracked brain activity to measure engagement during the writing process.
The findings revealed that those using ChatGPT had the lowest levels of brain activity and produced the weakest results in thinking, writing quality, and concentration.
