Openai’s agent tool, Operator, may be released sooner rather than later. Changes to ChATGPT’s codebase suggest that the operator will make it available to users as an early research preview on its $200 Pro subscription plan.
Although the changes have not yet been published, a user of X who goes by Choi spotted these updates in ChatGPT’s client-side code. TechCrunch independently identified the same reference to the operator on Openai’s website.
Here are three interesting pieces of information we found:
The operator.chatgpt.com url has multiple references. This URL is currently redirecting to the main chatgpt.com web page. If you want to try out the operator, there will be a new pop-up asking you to upgrade your plan. “Operator is currently available only to Pro users as an early research preview.” On the page listing the Plus and Pro plans, Openai adds “access to operator research previews” as one of the benefits of the Pro plan.
Bloomberg previously reported that Openai is working on a general-purpose agent that can perform tasks in a web browser.
This sounds a bit abstract, but think about all the mundane things you do on a web browser on a regular basis, with quite a few clicks. Think following someone on LinkedIn, adding an expense in Concur, assigning a task to someone in Asana, or changing the status of someone in Asana. Salesforce Outlook. Agents can perform such multi-step tasks based on a set of instructions.
More recently, information has reported that Openai could launch the operator as early as this week. With today’s changes, it looks like everything is ready to go live.
Anthropic has released an AI model that can control your PC using the “Use Computer” API, as well as local tools to control your mouse and keyboard. Currently available as a beta feature for developers.
The Operator appears to be available on the ChatGPT website. That means it doesn’t interact with your local computer. Instead, Openai will likely run on its own server running a web browser to perform tasks.
Nevertheless, it shows that Openai’s ability to interact with computers is progressing. Operators are specific sandboxed implementations of your company’s underlying agent framework. It will be interesting to see if the company has more information to share about the technology that powers its operators.