online<\/a>\u00a0to a limited number of US customers who pay $200 (R3,680) per month for the recently introduced\u00a0ChatGPT Pro subscription. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe company said it hopes to learn from Operator\u2019s\u00a0early\u00a0users so it can improve the product and plans to offer it to more paid customers over time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also plans to release additional AI agents in the coming months, OpenAI CEO\u00a0Sam Altman said during a livestream introducing the product.
The Operator rollout is part of a broader industry push toward agents, or AI software that can complete multi-step tasks for users with minimal supervision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
OpenAI-backer Microsoft and rival\u00a0Anthropic have launched\u00a0their own takes\u00a0on agent software, as have\u00a0a\u00a0number of other startups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies hope such tools can save users time with their personal and professional tasks and thereby live up to the long-held promise that AI will make people more productive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Altman previously said agents will be \u201cthe next giant breakthrough\u201d for AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a demonstration of the tool on Wednesday, Peter Welinder, OpenAI\u2019s vice president of product, and\u00a0Yash Kumar,\u00a0who leads product and engineering for Operator, showed how the tool could\u00a0look for a restaurant reservation or\u00a0recognize the items on a handwritten list to prep an online grocery order.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kumar said OpenAI partnered with a number of companies on the tool, including Instacart, OpenTable, Uber\u00a0and StubHub, in part\u00a0to ensure Operator\u00a0works well on their websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Kumar prompted Operator to use OpenTable to\u00a0book a table at San Francisco restaurant Beretta around 7 p.m.,\u00a0the tool opened a remote browser window, went to OpenTable\u2019s website and\u00a0searched for the restaurant \u2014\u00a0but couldn\u2019t initially find it. As\u00a0it turned out,\u00a0OpenTable was set to search for restaurants in Iowa, not California. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Kumar had previously instructed Operator\u00a0to search within a certain San Francisco zip code for relevant queries, so\u00a0on its own, the\u00a0tool switched to searching OpenTable in San Francisco and then shared a reservation for him to approve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe see a lot of potential for how this can evolve from small things to medium things to\u00a0large things,\u201d Kumar told Bloomberg News. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He personally has been using Operator to do his grocery shopping and to book reservations at tennis courts.
Operator can also carry out multiple tasks simultaneously. For example, a user might prompt the service\u00a0to find a hotel in Vancouver that has Peloton bikes in its gym\u00a0and then, before it has finished, ask Operator\u00a0to find\u00a0an American Girl doll bed on Craigslist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As long as a user has confirmed that Operator can carry out a transaction \u2014 such as buying a pair of leggings from an online store \u2014 and has input any required\u00a0credentials and payment information, the tool\u00a0should be able to complete a purchase, Kumar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
OpenAI plans to eventually release the AI model behind Operator for developers to use to build their own agents.
With those capabilities, however, AI agents like Operator also present\u00a0new safety and security risks, given the potential for AI to make mistakes or be misused by bad actors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s one thing for a chatbot to spit out an inaccurate response to a question about a historical event and quite another for an agent to make mistakes with someone\u2019s credit card.
OpenAI said Operator is meant to turn down some tasks, such as actions involving banking and anything the company considers harmful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a number of actions the tool will not complete, and will instead alert a user to carry out, including logging in to websites, providing payment information\u00a0and filling out CAPTCHAs, the company said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Operator should ask a user for approval before it does things like ordering something online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For some tasks, such as writing emails,\u00a0the service\u00a0will require a user to supervise it, OpenAI said.\u00a0<\/strong>Users can also take control of any tasks that are in process\u00a0and pause them if need be.
\u201cThe user should always feel they\u2019re in control,\u201d Kumar said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI is rolling out an artificial intelligence tool that can help book flights, plan grocery orders\u00a0and even complete purchases for users.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":579738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[92837],"tags":[83065,45266,35366],"class_list":["post-579735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","tag-chatgpt","tag-openai","tag-operator"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579735"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579735"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579741,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579735\/revisions\/579741"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}