Why OpenAI wants you to let ChatGPT take over your computer, web browser and all

OpenAI staffers say they're close to realizing one of the AI lab's longest-standing ambitions.

Since the company's 2015 founding, leaders have hoped to one day build AI agents that can use a computer — and, crucially, a web browser — with the same dexterity as a human. A huge challenge has been collecting and creating the data to train these agents. OpenAI now has enough faith in the tech to start rolling out Computer Use tools to customers.

This year, the company launched a Chrome extension that lets ChatGPT take over the browser, created cloud and in-app browsers for ChatGPT to interact with public websites, and added Computer Use to its Codex coding tool.

The same underlying tech now also lets users have ChatGPT complete tasks on other apps. OpenAI's president, Greg Brockman, wrote on X that an April update made his company's tech "no longer just for coders, but for anyone who does computer work."

Employees who work on the tools for OpenAI told Business Insider that while there's room for improvement, the tools are at an inflection point. Rival Anthropic is also racing to improve its version of Computer Use and was the first to market in 2024. As of May, at least 600,000 organizations had tried Anthropic's Claude Cowork feature, which uses the tool.