OpenAI has started previewing a new tool called Operator that can be navigated within a web browser. The software uses what the company calls a “Computer-Using Agent,” according to a blog post published Thursday. “CUA is trained to interact with graphical user interfaces (GUIs)—the buttons, menus, and text fields that appear on the screen—just as humans do,” OpenAI says of the model. I am. “This gives you the flexibility to perform digital tasks without using OS or web-specific APIs.”
The current release of Operator is built on OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. It combines the vision capabilities of its algorithms with “advanced reasoning” trained through reinforcement learning. Operators have the ability to “break down tasks into multi-step plans and adaptively self-correct as challenges arise.” According to OpenAI, this feature represents the next stage in AI development.
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As with past research previews, OpenAI cautions that Operator is “still in its infancy and has limitations” and that it “still cannot reliably perform in all scenarios.” For example, depending on the task involved and the complexity of the interface, agents can greatly benefit from allowing users to spend a little more time crafting more detailed prompts. According to The Verge, Operator gives users control if they get stuck on a task. It also hands over control every time a website requests sensitive information, such as login credentials. The company said the tool was designed to “reject harmful requests and block unauthorized content.”
OpenAI will initially offer Operator to users of its $200 per month ChatGPT Pro subscription. We’ve also partnered with companies like Instacart to offer agents on our platform, but again you’ll need a ChatGPT Pro subscription to test the integration.
Operator joins a growing list of AI agents that can navigate across web browsers or operating systems. Anthropic first offered this feature in October with the release of its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, and more recently, Google offered this feature with its Gemini 2.0 model and Project Mariner.
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