OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Agent to Become a Personal Assistant

OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Agent for Pro, Plus, and Team users. It's an AI-powered personal assistant that connects to a variety of online services to help you complete tasks, the company said during a livestream Thursday.

Using the power of OpenAI's o3 "reasoning" model, with its deep learning capabilities, along with Operator , ChatGPT Agent can step through one task after another to generate complex reports. ChatGPT Agent can visualize what it's doing through a virtual desktop interface, where you can see its train of thought, what it's browsing the web, and what systems it's connecting to.

During the livestream, OpenAI members demonstrated how ChatGPT Agent could be used to plan a wedding. The tool could check out the wedding venue offers, find a date, find a nearby hotel, check the forecast, browse other websites, search for a tuxedo on Nordstrom's website, search for wedding gifts, and present a final report. Users could also chime in to ask for help finding a pair of black men's shoes.

ChatGPT Agent can connect to a variety of services, such as email, calendars, news apps, and more. OpenAI says security is at the heart of the model, and ChatGPT Agent will ask for your permission before performing any sensitive actions, such as making a purchase or submitting a form. ChatGPT Agent will not perform 'high-risk tasks' such as engaging in financial transactions or giving legal advice. The system will also reject 'harmful or illegal requests,' OpenAI says.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The launch of ChatGPT Agent is the next step in the pursuit of artificial general intelligence, or AGI. These are AI models so advanced that they can gain a general understanding of the world around them and compete with humans on tasks. Current AI systems, while seemingly intelligent, do not actually understand the world and simply arrange words mathematically in a way that best mimics human speech, based on certain criteria. Agentic AI systems, which can perform complex tasks across multiple systems, are seen as a major step toward AGI.

Because Agentic AI is better able to simulate complex human thought processes, these systems can be assigned a task and dispatched to complete it. While it is difficult to measure the economic impact of billions of AIs performing jobs that are traditionally done by humans, entire industries will be affected.

Jessica Tanner

Update 21 July 2025