What’s OpenAI really building? This leak spells it out
A recently released internal document reveals OpenAI’s strategy to evolve ChatGPT into a “super-assistant” by the first half of 2025. The document, titled “ChatGPT: H1 2025 Strategy,” became public as part of the Justice Department’s case against Google.
According to the document, OpenAI envisions ChatGPT as a “super-assistant” that “knows you, understands what you care about, and helps with any task that a smart, trustworthy, emotionally intelligent person with a computer could do.” The internal strategy emphasizes that models like 02 and 03 are capable of reliably performing agentic tasks. It also cites the use of tools like computer use which would boost ChatGPT’s ability to take action. Multimodality and generative UI will allow both ChatGPT and users to express themselves in the best way for the task.
OpenAI describes ChatGPT as “T-shaped,” possessing “broad skills for daily tasks that are tedious, and deep expertise for tasks that most people find impossible (starting with coding).” The document indicates the broad skills include answering questions, finding a home, contacting a lawyer, joining a gym, planning vacations, buying gifts, managing calendars, keeping track of todos, and sending emails. The document also says “We will build a super-assistant that can generate enough monetizable demand to pursue these new models in H2.”
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The document identifies Claude by Anthropic, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Meta AI as OpenAI’s main competitors. The document states “[REDACTED] poses the biggest threat due to their ability to embed equivalent functionality across their products (e.g. without facing the business model cannibalization risks that Google does.”
The document also outlines OpenAI’s plans to lobby lawmakers to ensure competitors allow for any generative AI service within their environments. The document states “Real choice drives competition and benefits everyone. Users should be able to pick their Al assistant. If you’re on iOS, Android, or Windows, you should be able to set ChatGPT as your default. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta shouldn’t push their own Als without giving users fair alternatives. The same goes for search engines: Google, Apple, Microsoft should offer users a choice for their default search engine and make their underlying indexes accessible to Al assistants, including ChatGPT.”
During closing arguments in a Washington, D.C. courtroom trial on proposals to address Google’s search monopoly, the Justice Department is pushing to give newer companies like OpenAI access to search data that Google would have to share under the department’s proposed remedies. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Mehta questioned whether AI companies that don’t intend to build traditional search engines should get access to Google’s valuable data.”