OpenAI’s ‘Operator’ AI agent rumored to be coming in January

OpenAI is may be nearing the launch of a new artificial intelligence agent codenamed ‘Operator.’

Bloomberg is reporting that OpenAI is planning to release the AI agent tool in January as a research preview and through the company’s application programming interface for developers.

They describe ‘Operator’ as being able to use a computer to take actions on a person’s behalf, like booking travel and writing code as they cite two people familiar with the matter.

Three people told the publisher OpenAI has been working on several agent-related research projects, with the one nearest completion being a general-purpose tool that can execute tasks in a web browser.

The ChatGPT maker didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two weeks ago, the OpenAI team hosted an ‘Ask Me Anything’ for users on Reddit. When asked ‘What’s the next breakthrough in the GPT line of products and what’s the expected timeline?’ the CEO Sam Altman replied: “we will have better and better models, but I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents.”

The planned release is said to be part of a broader industry push towards agent or AI software that can complete tasks for its users with minimal supervision.

The report comes after other industry giants have already announced a move into this space, including Microsoft Corp which recently launched a set of agent tools for Copilot.

With this, a Copilot agent can be created in just a few clicks and it can then assist with tasks like comparing documents, summarizing files, and providing answers on specific content.

In October, Anthropic announced a new feature for its chatbot Claude called ‘Computer Use.’ This is where the AI can control a user’s PC, with this being the first AI model to offer computer use in public beta.

There are rumors that other companies are working on similar agents and AI software too, with Google thought to be preparing a release of an AI agent.

Featured Image: AI-generated via Ideogram

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