OpenAI Preps ChatGPT Agents in Challenge to Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
The Takeaway
• OpenAI wants to make ChatGPT a primary gateway for people to get work done.
• The new ChatGPT agents for spreadsheets and presentations can be slow or buggy
• OpenAI has also developed document collaboration tools.
As OpenAI tries to turn ChatGPT into a core application for white-collar work, it’s developing agent features that could make its customers less dependent on productivity apps from Microsoft.
In the latest example, OpenAI has developed features that let ChatGPT customers quickly create and edit presentations and spreadsheets that are compatible with PowerPoint and Excel directly in the chatbot without using the Microsoft apps themselves, according to a person who has used the new features.
The company has designed buttons below the ChatGPT search bar that direct users to create a spreadsheet or presentation, the person said.
It isn’t clear when OpenAI plans to release the features, but they imply that ChatGPT customers would also be able to download and open these Excel and PowerPoint files using a variety of applications made by companies other than Microsoft.
Anyone can create files that are compatible with Excel and PowerPoint because Microsoft has made the formats for those files open source, so OpenAI doesn’t need Microsoft’s permission to do so.
The new ChatGPT agents also will also help customers generate reports based on corporate or public data, or handle repetitive tasks involving websites, such as scheduling and booking appointments.
Taken together, these productivity features could make ChatGPT even more attractive as a business tool, posing a threat to productivity suites sold by the likes of Microsoft and Google. (Ironically, ChatGPT runs almost entirely on Microsoft servers due to the companies’ financial arrangement.)
Hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT, including tens of millions of paying subscribers, and OpenAI wants to make the app a gateway through which consumers and enterprises use online services or get work done.
An AI agent is technology that goes beyond what the basic version of ChatGPT can do, handling tasks that take multiple steps, without requiring a human to steer the whole process. (There are roughly seven types of AI agents.)