Perhaps OpenAI’s agent tool, Operator, will be released sooner rather than later. Changes to the ChatGPT codebase suggest that Operator will be available as an early preview for users on the $200 Pro subscription plan.
The changes are not publicly evident yet, but user X is passing by them Choi noticed these updates in the ChatGPT client code. TechCrunch separately identified the same references to Operator on the OpenAI website.
Here are three intriguing tidbits we found:
- There are many references to operator.chatgpt.com URL address. This URL currently redirects to the home page chatgpt.com website.
- A up-to-date pop-up will appear telling you to upgrade your plan if you want to try Operator. “Operator is currently only available to Pro users as an early preview,” it says.
- On the page listing the Plus and Pro plans, OpenAI will add “Access to Operator Research Preview” as one of the benefits of the Pro plan.
Bloomberg earlier reported that OpenAI has been working on a general-purpose agent that can perform tasks for you in your web browser.
While this sounds a bit abstract, think about all the mundane things you regularly do in a web browser with just a few clicks – following someone on LinkedIn, adding an expense in Concur, assigning a task to someone in Asana, or changing the status of a lead in Salesforce. An agent could perform such multi-step tasks based on a set of instructions.
Recently “Information”. reported that OpenAI could launch Operator as early as this week. With today’s changes, everything appears to be ready for public release.
Anthropic has released an AI model that can control a computer using the “Use Computer” API and local mouse and keyboard controls. It is currently available as beta function for programmers.
It looks like Operator will be available on the ChatGPT website, which means it won’t work with your local computer. Instead, OpenAI will likely run a web browser on its own servers to perform tasks for you.
Nevertheless, this shows progress in OpenAI’s ability to interact with computers. Operator is a specific sandbox implementation of the company’s agent platform. It will be intriguing to see if the company has more information about the technology behind Operator.