By Deepa Seetharaman and Juby Babu
July 9 (Reuters) – OpenAI showcased a new AI agent on Thursday meant to help white-collar workers access the power of coding tools without the sticker shock.
The agent, called ChatGPT Work, combines OpenAI’s popular chatbot with its AI coding tool, Codex, to create documents, presentations and websites, the company said. The service is powered by OpenAI’s most advanced AI model, GPT-5.6, which also debuted on Thursday.
That model’s launch was delayed last month at the U.S. government’s request over national security fears.
ChatGPT Work is a direct answer to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, an agent it launched in January that is capable of planning and executing multi-step tasks autonomously.
The launch reflects intensifying competition to build and sell AI tools for professional use, as technology companies seek to capitalize on rising demand for autonomous agents that can complete complex tasks with minimal human input. Anthropic and OpenAI — both of which are preparing for possible public offerings soon – are fighting for enterprise business, which is more lucrative than selling products to consumers.
Both ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork are designed for non-coders who want to tap into the abilities of AI coding tools, which are often more capable than standard chatbots but require specialized knowledge.
OpenAI officials emphasized that its new offerings would be both cheaper and more broadly available than its rivals’ products. The company launched three different sizes of its 5.6 model.
“You can apply the model’s ability to code to solve problems across every industry,” said Ty Geri, product manager for ChatGPT Work, in an interview. Geri described OpenAI’s 5.6 model as “competitive with models that are far, far more expensive at twice the speed and much, much cheaper.”
Thursday’s announcement also underscores a growing concern among companies about the high cost of using such AI tools.
Max Weinbach, analyst at consulting firm Creative Strategies, said the smallest version of OpenAI’s new model can complete a task about as well as the largest version — but at one-fifth of the cost.
“This is the first time where I’ve seen the small models complete these kinds of tasks,” he said.
Before this launch, OpenAI’s agentic offerings included Operator and deep research, later consolidated into ChatGPT Agent for individual users, as well as Workspace Agents for enterprise workflow automation.
ChatGPT Work will roll out on Thursday on web and mobile, beginning with Pro, Enterprise, and Edu users, and will expand to Plus and Business users over the next few days. OpenAI also announced a new ChatGPT desktop application and a hosted websites feature to let users build and share websites directly through ChatGPT Work.
(Reporting by Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Maju Samuel and Aurora Ellis)
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