OpenAI’s newest ChatGPT update brings more proactive agentic activities to the app, but one that automates a previous offering and widens its audience.
ChatGPT Pulse surfaces personalized searches and updates to users, along with information from connected apps, such as their calendar. Pulse, currently on preview and available to Pro users, will be available on mobile.
Pulse appears to be a continuation of OpenAI’s earlier feature, Tasks, which let users set time-bound activities. For instance, someone can prompt Tasks to send news updates every morning at 7 am. But Tasks was manual, Pulse aims to be more automated.
While Pulse is currently targeting individual users, the feature could eventually lead to more intelligent agents from OpenAI. Enterprises are in the process of determining the best use cases for agents, and one of these is understanding how to leverage an agent that proactively performs tasks on behalf of users.
Fidji Simo, CEO of Applications at OpenAI, said Pulse represents the next evolution of agents because it enables ChatGPT to anticipate a person’s needs, much like a real, human personal assistant.
“Most agents still need to be told what to do. The real breakthrough will come when AI assistants understand your goals and help you reach them without waiting for you to prompt them. That’s what the best human assistants do. Wealthy people have always had access to assistants who understand their preferences, anticipate their needs, and can help with everything from managing appointments and booking trips to shopping for clothes. In contrast, the average U.S. household spends nearly 20 hours a week on domestic work, logistics, and errands,” Simo said.
Pulse generally conducts most of its work at night, performing asynchronous research on behalf of the user.
“Each night, it synthesizes information from your memory, chat history and direct feedback to learn what’s most relevant to you, then delivers personalized focused updates the next day,” OpenAI said.
Users can choose to connect apps like Gmail and Google Calendar, but OpenAI said the integrations “are off by default.” This allows ChatGPT to provide people with a rundown of their meetings the next day, draft a sample meeting agenda, or remind someone to buy a gift for a birthday.
The company emphasized that users have control over what information Pulse gives them. A Pro user can tap curate on ChatGPT to guide Pulse on what they want to see and when. The idea is that Pulse can learn from this guidance to better anticipate users’ needs in the future.
OpenAI added that “topics shown in Pulse also pass through safety checks to avoid showing harmful content that violates our policies.”
Unless saved as a chat, each Pulse is only available for that day only.
Enterprises dream of AI agents that anticipate users’ needs. LangChain CEO Harrison Chase spoke of “ambient agents,” where agents are constantly listening and automating workflows and tasks without prompting.
However, even as enterprises continue to explore and add AI agents into their workflows, many current agents still involve manual prompting from a person. Some enterprise AI agents behave more like regular AI assistants, providing information based on the context of the current conversation they are having. AI agents also typically require a trigger of some sort from the workflow.
Currently, people are uncertain about what Pulse offers. This could underscore the fundamental disadvantage ChatGPT has in the agent space: People interact with it via a conversation.
Meanwhile, others are questioning why Pulse is needed in the first place. After all, wouldn’t it distract users, removing the benefit of having an agent streamlining their workday?
But OpenAI is not the only one focused on this kind of personalized AI agent use. Huxe, from some of the creators of the popular Google app NotebookLM, aims to offer the same.
If Pulse or Huxe is successful and gains adoption, OpenAI’s Simo said it could unlock a wider use case for people.
“This shift – from a chat interface to a proactive, steerable AI assistant working alongside you –is how AI will unlock more opportunities for more people,” she said.
