OpenAI’s Operator, an AI agent capable of autonomous online actions, is expanding its reach beyond the US to eight new countries. This expansion includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and the UK. Availability is contingent on having a ChatGPT Pro subscription, which costs $200 per month.
ChatGPT and OpenAI logos.
Operator’s Global Rollout and Availability
OpenAI announced this international expansion on Friday, specifying that the Operator agent is rolling out to Pro users in the aforementioned countries. While most locations with ChatGPT access will have Operator, the company is still working on expanding to the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland. No specific timeline for release in these regions has been given.
Agentic AI: A New Paradigm
Unlike traditional generative AI models that respond to user prompts with text, images, audio, or video, Operator is designed to take autonomous online actions on the user’s behalf. This “agentic AI” can monitor and respond to changing conditions in real-time, rather than simply following pre-programmed instructions. This allows Operator, and similar competitors like Anthropic’s Computer Use API and Microsoft’s Copilot Actions, to perform various online tasks. These tasks can include transcribing and summarizing meeting minutes, booking travel arrangements, researching topics, and compiling information into reports.
How Operator Works: A Closer Look
OpenAI’s Operator utilizes a “Computer-Using Agent” (CUA) model built on GPT-4o. Trained similarly to OpenAI’s reasoning models, o1 and o3, Operator is launched from the ChatGPT home screen and operates in a separate web browser page. The agent provides a running narrative of its actions to keep the user informed and requests user intervention for specific tasks like entering login credentials or credit card information.
OpenAI Operator interface.
Performance and User Experience
The effectiveness of Operator is still under debate. Early testers have reported that the system can be slow and requires frequent user oversight. This suggests that while the concept of an agentic AI is promising, there are still practical challenges to overcome in terms of performance and reliability.
Conclusion: The Future of Agentic AI
The expansion of OpenAI’s Operator marks a significant step in the development and accessibility of agentic AI. While the technology is still in its early stages, the ability of AI agents to perform complex online tasks autonomously has the potential to revolutionize various industries and aspects of our lives. The ongoing development and improvement of these agents will likely be a key area of focus in the AI field in the coming years. As OpenAI continues to refine Operator and expand its availability, it will be interesting to observe its impact on the wider adoption and evolution of agentic AI technology.
