Isa Fulford, the research lead for OpenAI’s new ChatGPT agent, needed to order a bunch of cupcakes, so she asked the AI tool to do it for her. “I was very specific about what I wanted, and it was a lot of cupcakes,” she says. “That one took almost an hour—but it was easier than me doing it myself, because I didn’t want to do it.”
OpenAI has launched a new agent for ChatGPT that uses a virtual browser to complete tasks and can generate downloadable files, specifically PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets. While not a full replacement for the Microsoft suite of workplace tools, the features included in this agent from OpenAI could obviate some users’ reliance on Microsoft’s enterprise software. The two companies are longtime partners and currently in contract negotiations over ongoing access to OpenAI’s models.
The release is part of OpenAI’s ongoing efforts to turn its nearly three-year-old chatbot into a money-making product. No small feat, despite the tool’s millions of users, when you factor in the costs to train and run powerful AI models as well as the exorbitant salaries required to retain top-tier staff members.
An agent, in this context, refers to an AI tool that is able to—or at least attempts to—navigate third-party software and websites and make decisions on its journey to complete digital tasks, following an initial set of instructions from the user. “Agent” is the buzziest of buzzwords right now for companies looking to sell generative AI tools, especially those with an eye on enterprise customers.
“We’ve tried to build a product with a whole lot of enterprise use cases,” says Yash Kumar, the product lead on the ChatGPT agent. In addition to its file-generating capabilities, the agent can fill out online forms, use a programming terminal, and make calls to public APIs to online services like Google Drive and SharePoint.
This isn’t the first agent released by OpenAI in 2025. The new ChatGPT agent brings together aspects of OpenAI’s web-browsing Operator and its long-processing deep research features, both released earlier this year and considered to be agents by the startup. “I was on the deep research team, and Yash was on the Operator team,” Fulford says. “We realized that the two products are very complementary, and basically decided to combine teams.” The ChatGPT agent can switch between interacting with a visual browser, where it can click around like Operator does, and a text-based browser, where it can process loads of websites like deep research does.
The rollout of the ChatGPT agent is coming first to Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers, starting today for Pro users. Enterprise and Education subs will likely receive access to the feature later in the summer. At launch, Pro users are generally capped at 400 agent prompts a month, with 40 prompts allowed for the other tiers of paying users. It’s unclear when this feature will roll out for free users of ChatGPT.
