OpenAI Operator: New AI Assistant Orders Groceries and Makes Reservations

OpenAI made artificial intelligence easily accessible to both consumers and businesses when it launched ChatGPT in late 2022, setting off a frenzy of innovation and adoption. Not to stop the momentum, OpenAI recently released a new AI tool named Operator.

Operator can carry out various tasks almost autonomously. The AI tool is capable of searching the internet and even interacting with menus and buttons on websites. Users can ask Operator to shop for groceries, buy tickets, make restaurant reservations, or fill out forms.

“The ability to use the same interfaces and tools that humans interact with on a daily basis broadens the utility of AI, helping people save time on everyday tasks while opening up new engagement opportunities for businesses,” OpenAI wrote on its site.

The AI tool does make mistakes, which Operator sometimes corrects on its own and other times needs human assistance. According to Ars Technica, Operator appears to be very good at repetitive tasks like creating shopping lists but can fail when interacting with tables or calendars. Operator cannot perform actions that would be considered illegal and is blocked from accessing adult entertainment and gambling websites.

At the moment, Operator is only available to ChatGPT Pro subscribers, who pay $200 a month to access OpenAI’s latest tools. Ultimately, Operator will be available through other paid services, and a free version will also be launched.

How Does OpenAI Operator Work?

Powered by OpenAI’s new AI model Computer-Using Agent (CUA), Operator monitors a user’s computer activity through screenshots. Using the captured images, it analyzes the data, decides on the appropriate action, and controls the computer to carry out the task. All the while, the human user can see what Operator is doing via a separate, tiny browser window.

Starting Operator is as simple as describing what task needs to be completed. From there, the AI tool tries its best to complete the instructions. If it gets stuck, such as solving CAPTCHAs, Operator will reach out for human help.

In the background, Operator is tracking conversations to train its AI models. Keep in mind, Operator “sees” everything a user is doing on their computer and stores the screenshots on OpenAI’s cloud servers, so a lot of trust is being placed in the company. For Operator users concerned about privacy, information and data sharing with OpenAI can be disabled by deselecting the “improve the model for everyone” setting. Passwords and payment details can also be hidden from Operator using “takeover mode.”

Operator is part of an AI revolution taking place where the technology can act with little or no help from humans. Just like software giant Oracle’s AI agent for sales teams, Operator can perform repeated or tedious tasks and adapt to changing conditions in real time, allowing humans to focus on more important and complex problems.