OpenAI has just presented Operator, an AI assistant capable of reserving a restaurant, organizing a trip or even doing shopping. A new kind of tool presented as a true life companion.
OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, DALL-E and Sora, is starting the year with great fanfare. January 22Kevin Weil, product director of the company, announced during an event organized in Davos that ChatGPT would once again evolve and would soon be able to realize “things in the real world”. To these words, he added that this innovation could concern “anything that involves filling out forms, making a reservation at a restaurant”. The next day, OpenAI unveiled its new artificial intelligence agent named Operator.
Now, users will meet a new addition to the OpenAI family. As the firm explains on its site, “Operator combines the capabilities of GPT-4 (the latest version of ChatGPT) with advanced reasoning using reinforcement learning.” More so, users can ask Operator “to carry out a wide variety of daily tasks” such as ordering a taxi, booking a hotel room, buying tickets for a concert.
Open AI Operator: an agent that navigates the web for you
Concretely, Operator will become a daily assistant. Where ChatGPT offered a rather passive conversational chat, given that it could not perform specific tasks, Operator will become a real ally. To do this, the user gives a task to the AI, and the latter takes care of everything. For example, if we ask Operator: “book me a campsite for 4 people for the weekend of August 15 in the Vercors.” The AI agent will go to the internet on its own, scroll through web pages, select dates and even fill in text fields.
Beyond booking accommodation, Operator is divided into several categories of tasks such as shopping, grocery delivery, catering, travel and surely more to come. Furthermore, when it is carrying out a task, Operator explains what it is doing in real time. A good way for the user to keep track of steps and also stay in control. If necessary, the user can stop Operator in its tracks.
Open AI Operator: an intelligent assistant for $200 per month
Faced with such a presentation, users, whether fans of artificial intelligence technologies or not, are perhaps waiting to be able to test Operator for themselves. For now, please note that OpenAI’s new baby is only available in the United States and reserved for ChatGPT Pro subscribers, for a subscription of $200 per month. A luxury that not all users can afford… This is why subscribers to GPT Plus (€22.99 per month) will have access to Operator in the coming months, according to OpenAI. But until then, some adjustments should be made.
“We’ll improve it, we’ll make it cheaper, we’ll make it more widely available, but we really want to get it into people’s hands,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. He also adds that other AI agents are expected to be announced by the company and put into operation “in the coming weeks and months.” As for the arrival of Operator in Europe, Sam Altman made it known that this would not be happening right away. A delay which could be linked to European regulations which always annoy Americans.
Thus, Operator joins the list of AI agents such as Claude, Anthropic’s chatbot, and the future Gemini 2.0 from Google. While awaiting massive use of these new daily companions, Operator seems to be leading the way towards a new artificial intelligence market, intended for the greatest number of users and with the aim of making their daily lives easier. In the past, many science fiction films and novels have imagined it, now it is a reality.