{"slug": "openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job", "title": "OpenAI launches ChatGPT Work, an agent built to finish the job", "summary": "OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work, an AI agent within ChatGPT that can autonomously complete complex tasks across apps and files, powered by the new GPT-5.6 model and Codex technology. The agent aims to transform ChatGPT from a question-answering tool into a productivity assistant that can handle multi-step workflows, with early adopters like Zapier reporting significant efficiency gains.", "body_md": "*OpenAI has spent two years telling people that ChatGPT can answer almost anything. With its latest release, it wants ChatGPT to finish the job instead. The company has introduced ChatGPT Work, an agent inside ChatGPT that it says can take action across a user’s apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into completed work.*\n\nAccording to OpenAI, the agent can gather information across a person’s apps and workflows to produce finished materials such as sheets, slides, docs and web apps, breaking complex projects into smaller steps it completes on its own.\n\nIt is powered by GPT-5.6, the frontier model that launched the same day as part of a [broad rollout](https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-gpt-5-6-broad-rollout-us-approval) that cleared US government testing, which OpenAI says makes ChatGPT state of the art at reasoning through multi-step tasks and at producing materials that follow a user’s own templates and reference files.\n\nCodex is the engine underneath. With Codex technology built in, OpenAI says ChatGPT can now get real work done across web, mobile and desktop, and it notes that more than five million people use Codex every week, with over a million now using it for tasks outside software development. That lineage extends the company’s decision to [merge ChatGPT and Codex](https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-brockman-chatgpt-codex-unified-agentic-platform) under co-founder Greg Brockman.\n\n### How it is meant to work\n\nThe suggested way in is a task the user already knows well: analysing a month-end budget variance, turning source material into a marketing campaign brief, or preparing for a sales meeting. Users can follow the agent’s progress, answer its questions, change direction and approve important actions as it goes.\n\nIt can also take on entire workflows from a single request. OpenAI gives the example of turning customer research into a campaign brief, using that brief to create marketing assets, then adapting those assets for different markets while carrying context through each step.\n\nThe pitch is that context does not have to be re-explained at every stage, because the agent holds it across the whole chain.\n\nOpenAI leans on early customers to illustrate the range. It says Angela Ferrante, head of enterprise marketing at Zapier, used ChatGPT Work to build a repeatable system for reviewing thousands of leads a month, tracing customer touchpoints across the company’s CRM and email, finding where follow-ups broke down, and generating a weekly executive dashboard that surfaced seven figures in potential sales.\n\n### Work anywhere, go further on desktop\n\nChatGPT Work is designed to move between devices. OpenAI says a user can start a task from a phone, review a draft on the go, check the status of a longer-running workflow between meetings, then pick the same work back up on the web at their desk.\n\nThe desktop app is where the strategy shows. There, ChatGPT can use local files and apps directly, and a new built-in browser lets it pull in websites, tools and online files in one place. OpenAI is merging its Codex app into this new ChatGPT desktop app, which carries Chat, Work and Codex together.\n\nCodex itself gains new capabilities, including inline editing within diffs, pull-request review in a side panel, faster computer use powered by GPT-5.6, and support for multiple repositories in a single project.\n\n### Plugins, Sites and scheduled work\n\nTo get started, users connect the tools where their work already lives through plugins, which link ChatGPT to systems such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, Google Drive and SharePoint, email, calendars, CRMs and project trackers. ChatGPT decides when to reference a plugin automatically, or a user can point it at a specific app by typing “@” followed by the app name, with a new unified directory bringing plugins into one place.\n\nOpenAI is also launching Sites in ChatGPT in public beta, which turns work or ideas into an interactive site or web app that can be shared by URL. The company suggests it for live dashboards, project trackers, launch calendars, prototypes, internal portals and interactive reports, and says ChatGPT can keep them updated as the underlying information changes.\n\nScheduled Tasks handle the repetitive end. They let ChatGPT perform an action once, repeat it on a schedule or when an event occurs, or monitor for changes over time, using connected apps and the browser.\n\nOpenAI’s examples include refreshing a recurring meeting agenda from new Slack updates, checking dashboards each morning and sending a summary of what changed, and updating a presentation when new feedback arrives by email. Throughout, the company stresses, the user decides what the agent can access, when it checks in, and when it needs approval before acting.\n\n### The browser and Computer Use\n\nOn desktop, the built-in browser lets ChatGPT research a market, compare sources, pull information from websites, and open and refine files from Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inside the app. Computer Use goes a step further, letting ChatGPT operate a person’s computer on their behalf, clicking, typing and moving files across their apps, tools and browser, either as a one-off or as part of a Scheduled Task. That work sits closer to a [software coworker](https://thenextweb.com/news/viktor-75-million-series-a-accel-ai-coworker-slack-teams) than a chatbot.\n\nOpenAI is also updating its Chrome extension so ChatGPT can be used directly in the browser’s sidebar, building on lessons from its Atlas browser. In the same breath, the company said it would begin sunsetting the standalone Atlas product and help users transition to ChatGPT.\n\n### From goals to outcomes across teams\n\nOpenAI frames ChatGPT Work as useful out of the box for whichever apps and files a team connects, and it walks through the departments it expects to benefit. Sellers, it says, can keep a live command centre current as account activity changes rather than rebuilding account plans by hand, with one example prompt asking the agent to monitor for new account activity and refresh a site every morning at 8am.\n\nMarketers can turn briefs, docs and performance data into leadership-ready readouts, updating the story as new data arrives; finance teams can run monthly close and reforecasting by reconciling variance across systems, modelling risk-weighted scenarios and building a live dashboard with Sites.\n\nOperations teams can walk into weekly reviews with current risks, owners and next steps pulled from connected project systems, while data analytics teams can query a warehouse, combine it with CRM and business context, and produce interactive reports that recommend where to focus.\n\nFor engineering, Codex can move from a ticket to a tested pull request in a single flow, inspecting the codebase, proposing a plan, making the change and preparing the review.\n\n### Security and governance\n\nGovernance gets its own billing. OpenAI says ChatGPT Work is built on the security, privacy and compliance foundation of ChatGPT Enterprise, and that Enterprise and Edu admins can centrally manage who has access, what company context the model can use, which tools it can connect to and what actions it can take. A Compliance API is meant to give oversight of conversations and actions at scale.\n\nControls differ by environment. On the web, admins can manage plugins and connected tools, configure browser use and network access, and restrict sensitive actions in connected systems; on desktop, the product builds on Codex’s enterprise governance model to extend safeguards to local files, apps and browsers.\n\nAn auto-review layer uses OpenAI’s most advanced models to check important actions before they run, and the company says that during adversarial red-teaming it blocked 100% of attempts to extract protected data, including attacks the reviewing model had not seen in training. That figure is OpenAI’s own and has not been independently verified.\n\n### Availability and pricing\n\nChatGPT Work is rolling out first to Pro, Enterprise and Edu users on web and mobile, reaching Plus and Business plans over the following days, with the updated desktop app available globally for Mac and Windows. Chat, Work and Codex are available on every plan, including Free.\n\nThe mechanics carry some housekeeping. Existing Codex users update the app and it becomes the new ChatGPT desktop app, developers can set Codex as the default view, and the current desktop app is renamed ChatGPT Classic.\n\nBecause ChatGPT Work is designed for longer, more involved work, usage is metered like Codex rather than a standard chat request, with more complex tasks consuming more of a plan’s included usage. Enterprise and Edu admins can set spend controls, group limits and individual overrides in the Admin Console as adoption grows.\n\nOpenAI calls the launch a first step toward a broader vision in which ChatGPT moves beyond answering questions to helping people turn their biggest ideas into reality. The ambition is plain enough: the company wants ChatGPT to become the thing you delegate to, not just the thing you ask.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-chatgpt-work-agent-launch", "published_at": "2026-07-10 08:24:58+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-10 09:07:45.172128+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-agents", "large-language-models", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "ChatGPT Work", "GPT-5.6", "Codex", "Zapier", "Angela Ferrante", "Greg Brockman"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-launches-chatgpt-work-an-agent-built-to-finish-the-job.jsonld"}}