OpenAI launches new AI personal assistant

OpenAI has launched a set of new AI assistants called Dots, as the company looks for new ways to commercialise its technology and tackle a growing threat from rivals including Meta that have recently launched their own “agents”.

The Dots assistants are designed to work independently towards users’ goals around the clock and to learn from human feedback over time, according to OpenAI, which unveiled the product at its annual developer day on Tuesday.

The launch represents a move by OpenAI into the market for so-called agents, bots that can perform complex tasks autonomously, which are increasingly seen in Silicon Valley as one of the most promising AI products.

However, OpenAI’s debut of Dots comes as it faces a growing outcry about its agents misbehaving during testing and training exercises, including hacking into the start-up Hugging Face and government websites.

The start-up led by Sam Altman will have to convince that Dots will be reliable enough to play a role in users’ personal and work life.

The $852bn company is exploring new ways to monetise its existing AI models and extend its reach beyond the 1.2bn consumers and enterprise users it currently claims. Many see AI agents as a market likely to grow at the expense of chatbots such as ChatGPT.

That effort has taken on renewed importance amid OpenAI’s calls for rival labs to slow the pace of development of new models.

On Monday, OpenAI said it was scrapping the planned release of its latest model, citing safety concerns. The recent hacking disclosures have put the company’s security practices and safeguards under intense scrutiny.

It is also hoping to see off a growing threat from Meta, which launched its own AI assistant Muse earlier this month, and start-ups including Instinct, whose agents have also rapidly gained users.

OpenAI is aiming to capitalise on the huge commercial opportunity of providing personal intelligence to customers. Meta’s share price has risen about 18 per cent since it launched Muse on September 8.

The ChatGPT maker said its dots could be used by influencers to draft social media posts or by scientists to evaluate evidence, and would be rolled out to both consumer and enterprise customers.

The company is launching the assistants first in its Pro, Business Premium and Enterprise plans.

OpenAI’s commercial fortunes have been revived in recent months following a slow start to the year. The company’s annualised revenue has grown more than 70 per cent since July, when OpenAI released GPT-5.6, and is now about $70bn, according to a person with knowledge of the group’s finances.