OpenAI unveils ChatGPT Work to automate workplace tasks as AI race intensifies

OpenAI on Thursday unveiled a new enterprise offering called ChatGPT Work, which is designed to leverage the popular chatbot to carry out and automate workplace tasks across a variety of applications and files.

ChatGPT Work is powered by OpenAI's most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model, GPT-5.6, and is capable of gathering context from apps, files and workflows to create finished documents, spreadsheets, presentations, reports and websites, the company said in its announcement.

The company explained that ChatGPT Work can use plugins to connect with apps like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive and Sharepoint, as well as email systems, calendars, CRM platforms, project trackers and other tools.

Once connected, ChatGPT can gather context about the task, pull in information, create documents and decks and perform and analysis while refining drafts in the background of the user's work.

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In OpenAI's announcement, the company said ChatGPT Work can continue to work on projects when the user isn't on their phone or computer through the use of Scheduled Tasks, which can take new messages and turn them into updated docs or slides and circulate the changes among team members, for example.

ChatGPT Work will be available as of Thursday for Pro, Enterprise and Edu plans and will roll out to Plus and Business plans in the coming days. It's also available in the ChatGPT desktop app on every plan, including the free plan.

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The announcement comes as OpenAI's latest foray into agentic AI tools following the launch of Operator and deep research, which were later consolidated into ChatGPT Agent for individual users, as well as Workspace Agents for automating enterprise workflows.

OpenAI is in the midst of an intense competition with AI rivals like Anthropic, which released Claude Cowork, an agentic tool that can plan and carry out multistep tasks autonomously.

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Anthropic added plugins to Claude Cowork that allowed it to automate tasks related to legal, sales, marketing and data analysis, which triggered a selloff in U.S. and European software and professional services stocks earlier this year amid concerns about its potential to disrupt the data analytics industry.

Microsoft, an OpenAI backer, also unveiled Copilot Cowork to expand its agentic AI offering on the heels of Anthropic's rollout.

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Reuters contributed to this report.