Reimagining Software Distribution
OpenAI’s Dev Day announcements pointed towards a bigger plan: a disruption of the traditional app store model. Taken together, the updates turn ChatGPT itself into the place where software can be discovered, launched, and used by people and agents alike.
In addition, OpenAI introduced a way for people to bring their ChatGPT identity with them, while also allowing them to use their existing AI allowance in third-party apps.
This isn’t the first time OpenAI has experimented with how apps could operate within its familiar chatbot interface, but the current vision feels more fleshed out than before.
For starters, the company is turning ChatGPT itself into a surface for launching apps. The chatbot, which the company says now has 1.2 billion weekly users, has yet to fully capitalize on its potential as a discovery mechanism for finding and using apps that work with AI.
To change that, ChatGPT will begin to make app suggestions within the flow of conversation when it recognizes that a particular app could help the user complete their task. From there, the user will be able to connect the app and begin using it directly within ChatGPT.
This is also aided by the expansion of ChatGPT’s plugin architecture, which now supports extensions.
This allows app developers to build interactive panels where users can work with their tools while they’re chatting with ChatGPT. This essentially turns the apps and services that users would have previously used via the web or through a native desktop or mobile app into something that’s operated directly within ChatGPT.
Developers that sign on with the system can build AI-native versions of their apps through ChatGPT, the same way they would through the open web or a mobile app store. As more and more discovery happens through AI chat, it’s a distribution channel that’s hard to pass up.
Image Credits:OpenAI
Users get an incentive to use that channel too, because sign-in features will let them bring their AI allowance with them. OpenAI has 16 launch partners on this effort, including Cognition’s Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw, and Dactyl, but plans to add more soon.
In a demo at the event, the company showed off how its own new meeting app could work inside ChatGPT, showing upcoming meetings from the user’s calendar. Here, the user could easily choose to use AI to take meeting notes, then receive a summary of follow-up items when the meeting wrapped.
In another example, users would work with design-focused apps like those from Figma and Adobe to work on revisions of their current project or use a particular feature that would have otherwise required a standalone app.
The apps can be shared with others, like work colleagues, in the lightweight websites ChatGPT now produces. From these sites, a user’s coworkers could sign in to the app with their own credentials and permissions, making the software experience personalized to them.
Developer Tools and Enterprise Integration
OpenAI also discussed improvements to how developers submit plugins for review. Now, developers will be able to track their review, see what needs to be fixed, request a human review, and update their plugin’s tools without starting their whole submission over.
The company also announced a new enterprise app marketplace where partners can market their services. At launch, there are some 30-plus partners offering their app through the marketplace, including Adobe, Figma, Sierra, Decagon, HubSpot, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Harvey, Legora, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Baseten.
Autonomous Agents
Beyond turning ChatGPT into an app discovery tool where users connect with apps directly, OpenAI’s embrace of agents is gently pushing users into a new era where they don’t have to think as much about which app to use or why, relying instead on their AI agents’ suggestions.
With the launch of its autonomous AI agents known as Dots, agents will navigate the web for you, executing the tasks that need to be done in their own cloud infrastructure. Each Dot has its own cloud computer and browser, and can also use connected apps. Compare this to the old model, where users who wanted to manage some type of project would have to download different apps to their computer or phone to make that happen.
Image Credits:OpenAI
Now, users will instead tell an AI agent what they want to have done, and it will simply do it for them. In some cases, the agent’s work may require access to another AI model or a particular application, which the agent may bring to the user.
As OpenAI explains, the Dots will be able to connect to its ecosystem of now over 4,000 apps.
What’s more, the Dots can be proactive, perhaps jumping in to offer help with a project or bug, or handling a task the user forgot, all done with the user’s approval. The Dots will perform proactive research in the background using connected apps in a read-only mode, while users retain control over the actions they take.
Notably, OpenAI focused on building the discovery, distribution, and interface pieces to counter the app store model, along with an identity layer and a mechanism for sharing a user’s existing ChatGPT AI allowance, without announcing a traditional billing or revenue-sharing system comparable to the economic layer of traditional app stores.
