OpenAI's Latest Features Take Direct Aim at the App Store Model
OpenAI's Dev Day on Tuesday may have focused on its agentic assistants known as Dots and its new AI models, but taken together, the company's announcements pointed toward a bigger plan: disrupting the traditional app store model. Collectively, the updates turn ChatGPT itself into the place where software can be discovered, launched, and used by both people and agents.
In addition, OpenAI introduced a way for users to carry their ChatGPT identity with them while also applying their existing AI allowance across third-party apps.
This isn't the first time OpenAI has experimented with how apps could operate within its familiar chatbot interface, but the current vision feels markedly more fleshed out than before.
ChatGPT as an App Discovery Surface
For starters, the company is turning ChatGPT itself into a surface for launching apps. The chatbot, which OpenAI says now has 1.2 billion weekly users, has yet to fully capitalize on its potential as a discovery mechanism for finding and using AI-compatible apps.
To change that, ChatGPT will begin suggesting apps within the flow of conversation when it recognizes that a particular app could help the user complete their task. From there, users can connect the app and begin using it directly within ChatGPT.
Expanded Plugin Architecture
This is further enabled by the expansion of ChatGPT's plugin architecture, which now supports extensions. The update allows app developers to build interactive panels where users can work with their tools while chatting with ChatGPT.
Effectively, this turns the apps and services that users would previously access via the web or through a native desktop or mobile app into something operated directly within ChatGPT.
Developers who sign on with the system can build AI-native versions of their apps through ChatGPT, the same way they would through the open web or a mobile app store. As more discovery happens through AI chat, it becomes a distribution channel that's hard to pass up.
Image Credits: OpenAI
Users gain an incentive to use that channel as well, because...
via TechCrunch AI