OpenAI introduced Dots at its DevDay event on 29 September, as TechCrunch, The Verge and The Decoder reported. Each Dot is a long-lived agent powered by GPT-6 Astra. Rather than borrowing your laptop, it operates from a cloud machine equipped with a browser, a terminal and its own storage, so it keeps a task going while your devices are switched off. Your own computer stays off limits unless you link it through the ChatGPT desktop app.
People talk to their Dot in group chats inside ChatGPT, Slack and Microsoft Teams, or by voice, with iMessage and RCS still waitlisted. OpenAI's plugin catalogue gives it a choice of over 4,000 apps, among them QuickBooks, GitHub, Gmail, Slack and Google Docs, and coding jobs are handed to Codex. The feature OpenAI put in front is proactive research: the Dot combs the apps you have connected for jobs it might take off your hands, an unsent invoice being the example given, and proposes them for approval.
While researching in that mode it can only read. Its wider guardrails are layered: OpenAI's built-in policies, Custom Rules that the user writes, and an automatic check on any step that involves someone's accounts or passes information on. Saved passwords are held in a vault the agent can use without seeing their contents, an Activity View logs what it does, and changing passwords remains the user's job.
A Dot is part of every ChatGPT Pro plan, the cheapest of which costs $100 a month, and of the new Business Premium plan at $100 per seat a month on annual billing. Enterprise, Edu and Healthcare customers may request a beta. Personal Pro subscriptions in Switzerland, the UK and the EEA come without one, although Business Premium seats carry a Dot in every ChatGPT region.
Pro subscribers outside Europe can start today, and Business Premium is the way in for teams in the UK and EU. Write your Custom Rules before connecting an inbox.