OpenAI launches dots, an always-on AI personal assistant

OpenAI has released dots, an always-on AI personal assistant, as part of its developer day announcements in late September, TechCrunch reported. The assistant is designed to keep working in the background even when users are not actively engaging with it, aiming to provide a seamless and intuitive experience.

Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI’s enterprise product team, explained that the idea behind dots was to create a single conversational entity rather than multiple separate conversations, making the AI feel more natural and accessible to users, according to TechCrunch.

Dots builds on OpenAI’s earlier Codex app, a coding tool released earlier in the year, but aims to reduce the need for user intervention and hand-holding. Embiricos noted that the product team focused on framing the technology in a way that feels intuitive and useful, rather than just adding new technical features.

The launch of dots comes amid a broader trend of companies developing AI assistants with engaging avatars, with startups like Instinct gaining attention and Meta promoting its assistant Muse, as noted by TechCrunch. OpenAI’s approach repackages its deep learning models into a more user-friendly form to meet this demand.