OpenAI launches ChatGPT Work, an AI agent that reads your Slack, manages your calendar, and builds websites on your phone

Key points

• OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work on Thursday, an AI agent built into ChatGPT that can handle multi-step tasks across email, calendars, Slack, and code repositories.
• The product runs on GPT-5.6, OpenAI's newest flagship model, and lives on OpenAI's servers so it keeps working even after you close your laptop.
• ChatGPT Work is available first to Pro, Enterprise, and Edu subscribers, with Plus and Business users getting access within days.
• OpenAI filed a draft IPO registration with the SEC last month, with reported valuations between $730 billion and $852 billion and annualised revenue above $25 billion.
• An OpenAI product manager said the agent scheduled 10 separate team testing sessions, a task he said would have taken him at least 30 minutes by hand.

ChatGPT has, until now, mostly been a very good question-answering tool. You type something in. It types something back. That is changing.

On Thursday, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work, an AI agent (software that can carry out a chain of tasks on its own, without you approving each step) built directly into ChatGPT. It is designed to connect to your real work tools, take a goal you describe in plain English, and get on with it.

We are talking about reading your Gmail, checking your Google Calendar, scanning your Slack messages, browsing your GitHub code history, and then producing a finished document, spreadsheet, report, or even a functioning website. All while you do something else.

The product runs on GPT-5.6, the company's newest and most capable model.

What does ChatGPT Work actually do for ordinary users?

The clearest answer comes from how OpenAI's own staff are already using it. Ty Geri, a product manager at OpenAI who helped build the product and spoke to VentureBeat on Friday, described needing to schedule pre-launch testing sessions across dozens of features and team members. He typed one instruction. The system checked Slack, checked GitHub, found the four people who had contributed most to each feature, and booked 10 separate sessions at times that worked for everyone.

"That would have taken me 30 minutes at least," Geri said.

He also described using it for harder analytical work: finding the reasons users were abandoning specific product features and drafting fixes. Tasks that used to take three months, he said, now take a week.

The biggest technical bet under the hood is a persistent virtual machine, a mini computer that runs permanently on OpenAI's servers rather than on your own device. That matters because most competing tools require your laptop to stay open and connected. This one keeps running whether you are at your desk or not.

"You can create a site on your phone at the beach and share it with your friends," Geri said. That is not a metaphor. The product includes a hosted website builder accessible from a mobile phone.

Connections to Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, and GitHub all run through MCP, the Model Context Protocol, an emerging open standard that lets AI software talk to other apps in a consistent way. Think of it as a universal plug adaptor for AI and software tools.

On privacy: Geri said all data access stays under user control, and that enterprise accounts include ZDR (zero data retention, meaning OpenAI does not store conversation data on its servers). Users on any paid plan can also opt out of having their conversations used to train future models.

A fair warning: one product manager's glowing demo is not the same as a broad user trial. Stories like this almost always feature the best possible outcome. How the tool handles messy real-world inboxes and chaotic calendars will tell the fuller story.

The honest takeaway: If you pay for any ChatGPT plan, check your account this week. Start with one low-stakes task, something like asking it to summarise today's calendar or catch you up on a Slack channel, before handing it anything sensitive.