What OpenAI’s dots assistant does

OpenAI’s dots is an AI assistant designed to work in the background, including when you are not actively asking it to do something. That always-on approach reflects a broader push to make assistants useful beyond individual prompts and conversations.

Once connected to a user’s calendar, email, computer and other tools, dots tries to help get work done. Rather than requiring someone to start and manage many separate conversations, the product presents the assistant as a single entity and a single conversation—an approach OpenAI says can make it feel more intuitive.

Dots is available in the ChatGPT desktop and mobile apps to subscribers on the Pro tier or higher. The source article notes that some of its capabilities could also be achieved with OpenAI’s Codex app, but doing so takes more work and hand-holding. With dots, the goal is to make an assistant that can keep working in the background and help users make progress with less direct oversight.

Why OpenAI gave the assistant a single identity

For Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI’s enterprise product team, giving dots one identity is a way to make an AI assistant easier to understand and use. “There’s kind of this convergent evolution happening,” he said of companies’ efforts to build assistants. As OpenAI worked on dots, the team found that framing it as “an entity” in “a single conversation,” rather than many separate conversations, “starts to become intuitive.”

That framing helps explain why assistants are appearing with recognizable identities, including cutesy mascots. The idea is not unique to OpenAI: Instinct became an overnight sensation with its assistant, while Meta put the full force of its marketing behind Muse. OpenAI released dots at its developer day in late September, joining those efforts as companies explore how people will use deep learning models in everyday work.

Embiricos’s point is that the product experience matters alongside the underlying technology. A consistent assistant can make it feel more natural to ask for help across tasks, rather than treating each interaction as a separate exchange. For OpenAI, presenting dots as one ongoing entity and conversation is part of making an always-on assistant feel intuitive.

How dots builds on Codex

Much of what dots can do was already possible with OpenAI’s Codex app, the company’s coding tool released at the beginning of the year. But getting there with Codex took more work and hand-holding, according to Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI’s enterprise product team.

He recalled celebrating when his wife began leaving her computer on all night so her agents could keep working. The anecdote highlights a difference between having agents that can carry out tasks and making that capability feel straightforward to use. With Codex, people could get much of the way to dots’ functionality, but had to put in extra effort to keep the agents going.

For Embiricos, making an assistant intuitive and useful is not necessarily a matter of adding new technology. He told TechCrunch Disrupt attendees that much of the work is about how the product is framed. Dots brings agent capabilities into an assistant experience designed around one entity and a single conversation, rather than requiring people to manage many separate conversations. The goal is to make the underlying capabilities easier for people to use in their work.

Who can use dots and how it connects to work

Dots is available in the ChatGPT desktop and mobile apps, but access is limited to subscribers on the Pro tier or higher. Plans start at $100 a month, so the assistant is not available to everyone using ChatGPT.

To help with work, dots can connect to a user’s calendar, email, computer and other tools. Once connected, the agent tries to help get work done. That access gives dots a way to work across the tools people already use, rather than limiting the assistant to a conversation in ChatGPT.

OpenAI enterprise product lead Alexander Embiricos said much of dots’ functionality could also be achieved with the company’s Codex app, its coding tool. But doing so takes more work and hand-holding. He recalled celebrating when his wife began leaving her computer on overnight so her agents could continue working. Dots is positioned as a more intuitive way to use an assistant that can keep working in the background, including when the user is not actively asking it to do something.