OpenAI Declares Chat Dead in Shift to Super App

OpenAI Declares Chat Dead in Shift to Super App

OpenAI is reportedly planning the largest overhaul of ChatGPT since it triggered the artificial intelligence wave.

As the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (June 7), the startup aims to turn the chatbot into a “super app” that includes coding tools and AI agents in a bid to generate revenue ahead of an initial public offering.

These changes are part of a wider reorganization as OpenAI tries to land lucrative business clients as it competes with Anthropic, the report added, citing interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees.

The FT characterizes this effort as a departure for OpenAI, as it focuses more on its coding tool Codex based on the idea that the future of AI is in agents rather than chatbots.

“Chat is dead,” one senior OpenAI employee told the FT.

The report added that OpenAI executives see ChatGPT, which has attracted close to 1 billion users since its debut, as a way to introduce customers to higher-value products. Most people use the chatbot for free, the FT said.

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The report said the upgrades, due to start in the coming weeks, will initially show up as changes to the ChatGPT website and mobile apps, guiding customers to use coding, image-generation and apps from outside partners.

“It will transcend the actual surface … 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 previously ran Codex and now oversees all of OpenAI’s core product and platform, told the FT:

“You can connect through it on your mobile, desktop or web. When you’re in the car, you can talk to it,” he added.

The FT report follows a story from The Wall Street Journal in March about OpenAI’s plans to combine the ChatGPT app, Codex and browser into a desktop super app.

Meanwhile, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that while ChatGPT is the preferred chatbot for personal use, Anthropic’s Claude has an edge when it comes to workplace AI use. ChatGPT users say they use the tool for things like writing and communication, learning and self-improvement, travel planning, finances, shopping and day-to-day organization.

“Among workers who use Claude, 81% say AI is either essential to their job or significantly enhances their productivity,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

This figure surpasses all other major AI platforms tracked by PYMNTS Intelligence, including Perplexity (79%), Meta AI (76%), Copilot (74%), Gemini (71%) and ChatGPT (71%).

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