OpenAI launches Dots, its Muse competitor

OpenAI is responding to Meta’s buzzy Muse AI with agentic helpers of its own: Dots. During its DevDay keynote on Tuesday, OpenAI announced that Dots will serve as always-on AI assistants that can “do nearly anything” across connected apps in the background while learning your preferences over time. The company’s capable GPT-6 Astra model powers Dots, which use their own cloud computer to access a web browser and more than 4,000 supported apps. You can interact with a Dot through a text-message-like interface that’s similar to the one offered by Muse, as well as hop on a voice call with it from ChatGPT on the web, desktop, or mobile. Dots can also connect to Microsoft Teams and Slack, where they will carry over the context from your sessions on other apps and devices. It will soon be able to talk to you over text message as well. For now, you can only create one Dot, though OpenAI plans to allow users to deploy multiple agents at once. Once you give your Dot a task, it will message you with updates and questions while it works. As an example, OpenAI says a developer working on an app could ask their Dot to use customer feedback to build and test updates, while presenting them with a video showing its changes. Meanwhile, a content creator could have their Dot review an interview transcript, find moments to clip, create show notes, and write social posts. You can follow along with your Dot’s progress by accessing its cloud computer. Dots also learn while they work, allowing them to personalize their output and come up with other tasks to complete “before you even think to ask,” according to OpenAI. You and your colleagues can also work with your Dot in ChatGPT Space, a new collaborative workspace in the app. The launch of Dots comes just weeks after Meta rolled out Muse, a customizable AI assistant capable of browsing the web, making purchases, generating documents, tracking goals, and more. Even as it soars in popularity, concerns are growing over its safety, with one user saying it handed out their address to a buyer on Facebook Marketplace without their knowledge. OpenAI says Dots come with “built-in rules for when to act independently,” but you can set custom ones that block certain actions or dictate when it should ask for permission. Dots come with an “auto-review” feature as well, which OpenAI says they’ll use to verify whether an action complies with custom rules and safety requirements. This also allows Dots to determine which tasks to hand off to users, like changing a password. Starting today, OpenAI is rolling out Dots to ChatGPT Pro, Business Premium, and Enterprise users. OpenAI is also testing a feature that lets companies create “specialist” Dots to handle specific roles inside organizations. OpenAI notes that conversations with your Dot won’t count toward ChatGPT usage limits. “In the future, you’ll be able to add more dots, and scale the output of each dot by either increasing its speed or the total amount of work it can take on per month,” OpenAI says. **Follow topics and authors** from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. - Emma Roth - - - - -

At OpenAI’s Dev Day event on Tuesday, the company announced the launch of Dots, a new personal agentic assistant powered by GPT-6 Astra. The company describes Dots as “remarkably capable, always-on agents built to handle everything.” Unlike Codex or ChatGPT, Dots are meant to operate independent of any specific hardware or interface, pursuing user-defined goals continuously in the background with minimal oversight. “Today, you can start with your primary dot, give it a name, and make it your own,” OpenAI said in an announcement post. “Over time, we envision teams of Dots working together on your behalf.” Dots will be available starting Tuesday in ChatGPT, for Pro and Business Premium users in eligible markets. Users can launch Dots from Codex or ChatGPT. In its announcement, OpenAI envisions a variety of ways Dots could be put to work. In one scenario, a software developer deploys a dedicated dot to monitor customer feedback, implementing bug fixes and requested features as necessary. In another, a scientist employs a dot to rerun analysis and investigate unexpected result as experimental data becomes available. Users can message Dots through Slack, Teams and other organizational platforms, with text message support coming soon. OpenAI also envisions “specialist Dots” that take on specific responsibilities. Individual Dots can be provisioned with specific identities, credentials and tools through existing systems. OpenAI is already working with Microsoft to integrate into the company’s Agent 365 security controls. Much of this functionality was already possible through Codex and similar agentic harnesses — but Dots bundles together those features in a new package with a focus on independent agentic actions. The branding also presents a bubbly, cartoonish persona, similar to Meta’s recently released Muse agent. The Dots look like…well, dots. The little floating cartoons are a makeover for OpenAI’s software, and are the latest example of a company attempting to make AI more relatable. When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Lucas is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo. You can contact Lucas by emailing lucas.ropek@techcrunch.com. View Bio