OpenAI plans to roll out an early version of a new ChatGPT feature that lets users schedule simple tasks to be completed later, as the startup works to turn its popular chatbot into a more dynamic digital assistant that competes with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa.
The feature, announced on Jan 14, will let users ask ChatGPT to draft a kid-friendly joke around bedtime at 8pm or simply share a reminder to walk the dog every morning at 8am. The chatbot will then send a written notification, such as an alert from the ChatGPT mobile app, at the appointed time.
Two years after OpenAI released ChatGPT, the product now has more than 300 million weekly active users who turn to it for writing emails, spitting out song lyrics and searching the web. With the scheduling option, OpenAI is vying to make ChatGPT more useful throughout the day by adding functionality similar to what has long been offered by digital assistants like Google’s Assistant, Apple Inc’s Siri and Alexa.
OpenAI expects to release the feature in beta in the coming days to its paid ChatGPT Plus, Team and Pro users, the company said. Users will be able to schedule tasks on the web or via OpenAI’s ChatGPT apps and can later modify those tasks in the same chat in which they were set up. Users can also access a task manager on the ChatGPT website. – Bloomberg
