OpenAI has elevated its ChatGPT chatbot by introducing a new feature that can automate various tasks, including vacation planning, filling out forms, making restaurant reservations, and grocery shopping.
The innovative tool, named Operator, was announced on Thursday and is described by OpenAI as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you.” The company emphasises that Operator is trained to engage with “the buttons, menus, and text fields that people use daily” on the internet.
Operator is designed to ask follow-up questions to tailor its actions more closely to user needs, such as retrieving login credentials for different websites. Users retain the ability to take control of the screen at any moment during the process.
“Operator is one of our first agents, which are AIs capable of doing work for you independently. You give it a task and it will execute it,” OpenAI stated in its blog post.
Currently, Operator is exclusively available to ChatGPT Pro users in the United States and can be accessed via Operator.ChatGPT.com. OpenAI has plans to extend this feature to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users in the future and aims to integrate Operator into ChatGPT itself.
However, the company has acknowledged some limitations with certain functionalities, particularly in managing calendars and creating slideshows.
OpenAI, which receives backing from Microsoft, has also indicated that users can opt out of some data collection for training purposes by disabling the “improve the model for everyone” setting in ChatGPT. This means that data generated through Operator will not be utilised for training their models. Additionally, users have the option to delete all browsing data and log out of all sites with a single click in the privacy settings.
Operator is positioned as a competitor to an earlier release from Anthropic, an AI startup supported by Amazon that developed the Claude chatbot. In October, Anthropic launched a feature called “Computer Use,” which enables its AI agents to perform tasks on computers similarly to humans. According to Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, this capability allows their AI to interpret computer screens, select buttons, input text, browse websites, and execute tasks through various software applications.
The generative AI sector—which includes companies like OpenAI and Anthropic alongside Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta—is projected to exceed $1 trillion in revenue within the next decade. Recently, Google confirmed an investment exceeding $1 billion in Anthropic. Reports indicate that Anthropic is in advanced discussions to secure a funding round of $2 billion at a valuation of $60 billion led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Such surge in funding displays the growing demand for AI infrastructure, further highlighted by President Donald Trump’s announcement of the $500 billion Stargate Project, a public-private initiative involving OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank to build AI data centres and create over 100,000 jobs in the U.S.