"Chat is dead."
Cristina Criddle
There's not a lot in here that we didn't already know about OpenAI's sprint towards making ChatGPT a "super app" but one quote, which I used in the title, is worth, um, chatting about perhaps.
The changes, which will give greater prominence and resources to OpenAI’s coding product Codex, reflect a growing conviction within the company that the future of AI lies not in chatbots that answer questions but in agents that perform tasks for users.
“Chat is dead,” said one senior OpenAI employee.
While the report cites "more than a dozen current and former employees" of OpenAI, the quote above is clearly from a current one. A senior one. That's interesting in so far as you can use it as a finger-on-the-pulse within the company. And it points to both an opportunity and challenge ahead for OpenAI.
First and foremost, it would be wild for the company to cede the chatbot ground. To be clear and fair, the rest of the report doesn't indicate that the 'chat' element of ChatGPT is going away, let alone dying – unlike, say, Sora – but it does indicate an effort and hope to move beyond it, and perhaps just use it as an entry point to get people in the door for the "real" services that OpenAI wants to push.
The company is embarking on the changes amid a belief that the advent of AI agents, which can perform multiple tasks for users from booking travel to organising calendars, will be a more valuable product than the chatbot.
That's obviously increasingly important as OpenAI angles towards an IPO. There was a time, perhaps a year ago, when it seemed like their top-line revenue and user growth was enough, but a lot has changed in a year. While it has long looked like Anthropic was in a better position from a bottom-line perspective, due to less spend (as, at least somewhat related, more focus), the fact that they've now surpassed OpenAI with that top-line growth is also a problem, obviously. And ahead of the would-be IPOs, the private valuations of the two companies now fully reflects that.
At the same time, at least one report suggests ChatGPT has surpassed the all-important 1B MAU mark – though the company has yet to officially announce it. While it remains record-breaking growth, a number of reports suggested that they were hoping to hit the mark by the end of last year. Doing so six months into this year suggests growth that is slowing, of course. Also not great: the fact that Google just announced the 900M MAU mark for Gemini at I/O last month.
Anthropic is attacking the business while Google is attacking the usage. So yeah, something had to change.
The overhaul, which is set to begin rolling out in coming weeks, will initially appear as changes to ChatGPT’s website and mobile apps, encouraging customers towards using coding, image-generation and apps from external partners.
Given that timetable, they'll also likely be battling their old friend Microsoft on the "super app" front. Probably Google as well, depending on how long it takes them to pull their agents and coding tools into the Gemini app.
The "apps from external partners" element is interesting, the report goes a bit more into that further down:
To encourage users to adopt those services, OpenAI is redesigning ChatGPT’s interface, adding new prompts and features that direct users towards coding tools, image generation and applications built by partners such as Canva and Booking.com, according to people familiar with the plans.
Over time, OpenAI intends to ditch the prompts and features, betting that its models will be able to automatically understand users’ intentions when they are on the app or site.
In other words, anyone partnering with OpenAI on this launch better prepare to be relegated back into the background eventually. But for now, this new "Super" ChatGPT will seemingly try to lean on partners for all it can do out-of-the-box beyond the things Claude may already be doing for you. Yes, we're still trying to make App Stores happen, in a way.
Outlining the changes, Thibault Sottiaux, who previously ran Codex and now leads all of OpenAI’s core product and platform, told the FT: “It will transcend the actual surface...what we’re building towards is where you have your own personal agent that is capable of helping you... across everything in your life, be it personally or at work.”
He added: “You can connect through it on your mobile, desktop or web. When you’re in the car, you can talk to it.”
To reiterate, that's a current OpenAI exec speaking on-the-record about these changes. And his comments also suggest a move beyond the chatbot but also that the company believes we may yet enter a world of "one AI to rule them all" – something I've explored more recently in thinking about if the AI world might play out in a similar manner to the old "bring your own device" strategy in enterprise. Is your personal AI going to be so ingrained in your life that it's also just most convenient to use it as your work AI?
Executives believe users will increasingly interact with a single AI assistant rather than a collection of separate applications. As agents become more capable, OpenAI expects the distinction between chatbots, coding tools, search products and other software categories to blur.
“When we have [artificial general intelligence], I don’t think there will be a large number of distinct brands,” said Alex Embiricos, OpenAI’s head of enterprise product. “Probably there will be a single entity that I can talk to that can do whatever I need.”
OpenAI sure seems to think so! Of course, the opposite might be true (or so Microsoft undoubtedly hopes).
“Approximately a year ago, OpenAI’s strategy was swing for the fences, whereas Anthropic’s strategy is make money first,” said Jenny Xiao, partner at Leonis Capital and former researcher at OpenAI.
“Now the two are converging, because both of them are trying to aim for an IPO and investors care more about money than dreams.”
Yeah, two roads diverged... until they suddenly converged when it became clear which was the better road.
Speaking of, I can't help but continue to think that the real risk here for OpenAI is in morphing ChatGPT from this consumer-facing phenomenon into this more enterprise-focused business. They wouldn't frame it that way, of course – again, one AI to rule them all, and all that – but this "super app" could certainly muddle the message of what exactly ChatGPT is.
Given the killer quote above, is it reasonable to think they might now even call such an app "ChatGPT" anymore? I mean, that would be truly crazy given that it has basically become the "Kleenex" brand of AI (no matter what Microsoft may think – lol).
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