By Belle Lin

OpenAI rolled out its latest entry in the red-hot area of independently operating AI bots, an agent that lets users automate tasks like online shopping and create spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

ChatGPT agent, as the bot is called, runs on a new AI model created to power the capability, the San Francisco-based company said. It works just as OpenAI's 'Operator' agent does, by accessing the internet through its own browser and can click, scroll and type just as a person would.

ChatGPT agent will be available to Pro, Plus, and Team users Thursday, and will be available for Enterprise and Education users later this summer, OpenAI said.

The difference between Operator and ChatGPT agent, however, is that the new agent is equipped with "deep research" capabilities that allow it to synthesize larger amounts of information it gathers from the web. That makes ChatGPT agent a combination of Operator and OpenAI's deep research agent, the company said.

Other potential uses for the ChatGPT agent include booking a restaurant reservation, creating detailed research reports and performing financial analysis, the company said. For example, users can ask ChatGPT to "look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news," or "analyze three competitors and create a slide deck."

"We think that this model is actually going to be quite good at low-level, first-, second-year, financial analysis type work that might have taken someone a night to do if they're getting pinged by their boss late at night," said Neel Ajjarapu, product manager for ChatGPT agent.

OpenAI's latest move reflects the speed at which tech companies have been racing to release agent capabilities for consumers and businesses.

As agent technology has evolved, business software companies from Salesforce to Workday have released versions of agents, which can do things like summarize reports and contact sales prospects and job candidates.

AI agents are generally known as bots that can perform tasks on behalf of humans. They promise to usher in a generation of products and capabilities that will drive revenue and lower cost for businesses. But they haven't yet delivered on that goal for enterprises, and need to connect to other apps and services to be truly useful.

ChatGPT agent is an "important step forward" in making ChatGPT valuable for not only answering questions, but doing things for users in the real world, said Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer.

The ability to create a rough draft of PowerPoints and detailed spreadsheets, which can then be edited by humans using Microsoft Office or other compatible software, is more novel for ChatGPT than some of its other features. That's useful for reducing the amount of work people need to spend creating presentations and analyses, sometimes from hours or days to thirty minutes, OpenAI added.

Still, OpenAI's new presentation and spreadsheet capabilities puts it in more direct competition with business software giant Microsoft -- and could add to the rift between the two companies that is reaching a boiling point.

Microsoft offers a similar AI agent that helps users create and edit PowerPoints and Excel spreadsheets. Other companies have also released agents designed to make it easier to create presentations and other reports with AI.

ChatGPT agent doesn't support Google's Slides and Sheets, the tech giant's rival to Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, OpenAI said.

OpenAI's Weil denied its features are meant to be competitive with Microsoft. "This is just how people communicate. They create spreadsheets, they create PowerPoints," he said.

Wall Street Journal owner News Corp has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.

Write to Belle Lin at belle.lin@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 17, 2025 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)

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