OpenAI, a leader in generative artificial intelligence, announced on Tuesday that it is launching a beta feature dubbed Tasks to ChatGPT, marking the company’s entry into the virtual assistant market and a potential rival to Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri.
Users of ChatGPT will be able to request activities to be completed at a later time. These jobs may be recurring actions like daily weather updates or weekly news briefings, or they could be one-time reminders like selling concert tickets.
OpenAI may also recommend tasks feature based on user chats, but users will have the choice to accept or reject them.
In order to stay competitive with chatbots powered by GenAI, Amazon updated its ten-year-old, financially unsuccessful Alexa service with GenAI capabilities after the introduction of ChatGPT in late 2022, which triggered a wave of investment in AI companies.
According to Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, the updated Alexa, which will act on user requests without prompting, will be available in the “coming months” in December of last year.
In the meantime, as part of its partnership with the Microsoft-backed firm, Apple has incorporated its “Apple Intelligence” technology into Siri, utilizing ChatGPT’s experience and obtaining users’ consent before requesting information from the OpenAI service.
According to OpenAI, the beta will be made available to Plus, Team, and Pro users worldwide over the next several days, starting with the web platform.
