Paying customers of OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now ask the AI assistant to schedule reminders or recurring requests. The new beta characteristic, known as duties, will begin rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro customers across the globe this week.
With duties, customers can set easy reminders with ChatGPT akin to, “Remind me when my passport expires in six months,” and the AI assistant will observe up with a push notification on no matter platform you have got duties enabled. Users may also now set recurring requests to ChatGPT, akin to, “Every Friday, give me a weekend plan based mostly on my location and the climate forecast,” or “Give me a information briefing on a regular basis at 7 am.”
The new job characteristic seems to be OpenAI’s first step into AI fashions that may act considerably independently, also called AI brokers. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that 2025 will likely be massive for AI brokers, even claiming they’ll “be a part of the workforce” this yr. Tasks is a reasonably restricted model of an agentic system, however it permits customers to set reminders with ChatGPT, a sensible characteristic most individuals have come to anticipate from assistants like Siri and Alexa. The scheduled info requests are extra distinctive, exhibiting new capabilities that earlier digital assistants weren’t able to.
Users can entry duties by deciding on “4o with scheduled duties” from a dropdown menu in ChatGPT. From there, they’ll ship ChatGPT a message telling the AI assistant what reminder or motion they wish to create. At instances, OpenAI says ChatGPT could recommend sure duties based mostly on chats. Users can set and handle duties by chatting with the AI assistant on any platform, or by way of a devoted duties supervisor tab that’s solely accessible on the internet app.
Through the duties characteristic, ChatGPT can now browse the net on a set schedule, however it won’t run steady searches within the background or make purchases. For instance, you would instruct ChatGPT to examine for live performance tickets to see your favourite artist in your space as soon as a month, however you may neither inform the AI assistant to provide you with a warning the second the tickets go reside, nor can ChatGPT purchase tickets for you. That stated, it’s a step towards these techniques.
OpenAI says it’s utilizing this beta interval to study extra about how individuals use duties earlier than it makes the characteristic broadly accessible on its cellular app and free tier of ChatGPT. For this beta launch, the corporate says you may’t set duties by way of Advanced Voice Mode.
While AI assistants based mostly on massive language fashions have pushed the boundaries of what computer systems can do, additionally they wrestle with some easy duties that smartphones are able to. OpenAI, Google, and different AI mannequin builders have needed to provide you with intelligent workarounds to get their assistants to set timers and create reminders. While these duties are comparatively low stakes, OpenAI desires ChatGPT to do rather more sophisticated duties transferring ahead.
OpenAI is gearing as much as launch extra superior agentic techniques, together with an agent reportedly known as Operator that may write code and e book journey. That system may very well be coming within the subsequent few weeks, in response to Bloomberg.
With extra superior agentic techniques comes extra potential issues. Tasks reveals a reasonably managed choice of agentic talents, however OpenAI’s safeguards could also be examined within the coming months because it rolls out extra unbiased AI techniques.
