OpenAI Unveils New AI Assistant Dots: Here’s What It Does

Topline

OpenAI on Tuesday afternoon launched Dots, an AI assistant that can work in the background and across thousands of apps, joining Meta and other big tech companies in the race to build mass publicly available AI agents.

Key Facts

Open AI announced Dots at its annual developer conference, describing them as assistants that can keep working on tasks even when you’re not actively using them.

Dots can connect to more than 4,000 apps, and users can give a Dot a task and ask it to work in the background, using its own cloud computer.

OpenAI says users can connect with their Dot agent in ChatGPT, Slack, Microsoft Teams, with texting coming soon, using them to update projects and research information.

The Dots agents will compete with Muse, the AI agent Meta released earlier this month, Gemini Spark, which Google released in May, and Instinct, an AI agent start-up.

Dots will be available for users starting Tuesday, but only for those who are subscribed to ChatGPT’s Pro and Business Premium plans—meaning unlike Muse, OpenAI’s agent will not be available for free.

KEY BACKGROUND

OpenAI’s announcement comes just weeks after Meta released Muse, its own always-available AI assistant, while Google and other companies are working on technology that can interact with other apps and complete tasks. Muse, which Dots will be in direct competition with, can connect to everyday services including email, calendars, shopping and travel. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who unveiled the dots at the company’s annual developer conference on Tuesday, said his goal is for AI to “feel like magical things it just does for you without you having to ask,” and said users may have seen early signs of this with virtual assistants that help with tasks like booking reservations. He said these assistants are useful but “trivial” compared to everything the technology has the ability to do.

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“This is the real-deal version of AI that we’ve always imagined for ourselves. It’s like an AI helper that always has your back, inspired by the cool versions of what we all watched in movies growing up,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at Tuesday’s developer conference.

TANGENT

Tuesday’s announcement comes as OpenAI grapples with safety concerns, having cited this as reason for delaying the rollout of its GPT-6.1 Astra on Monday. It also comes after findings that the company’s AI agents meddled with government sites and hacked into Hugging Face in July.

FURTHER READING

Meta Launches Muse Personal AI Agent As Staff Flag Security Flaws (Forbes)