Thread by @rowancheung

I got early access to ChatGPT Operator.

It's OpenAI's new AI agent that autonomously takes action across the web on your behalf.

The 9 most impressive use cases I’ve tried (videos sped up):

1. Ordering dinner ingredients based on a picture and a recipe

2. Planning a weekend trip based on hidden gems off Reddit, my budget and interests

Notice how at 0:06, ChatGPT Operator was blocked from Reddit but then decided to just do a Bing search with "Reddit" at the end

Very impressive decision-making

3. Crypto investment research based on tokens that are actually worth looking into

Notice how ChatGPT Operator got hit with a "Are you human" CAPTCHA, then pinged me to take control to confirm

Wild workaround

4. Booking a one-way flight from Zurich to Vienna using the Booking integration

This one required a bit of back and forth, with ChatGPT Operator pinging me and asking for my flight preference and having me take control of entering payment details

5. Scheduling an appointment with my barber after looking at my Google Calendar schedule/availability

Note that in this demo, ChatGPT Operator pinged me that I needed to sign in to Google to check my calendar

I tried a second time, and my login was saved session-to-session

6. Researching a good birthday gift for my mom based on what she likes

Similar to the Reddit block, ChatGPT Operator couldn't access NYTimes, so it pivoted and found another site.

Really neat.

Also cool to see it compare and find the best price across the web for me, too

7. Booking a one-time house cleaner for my home through the Thumbtack integration based on my budget

ChatGPT Operator came back to me with four highly rated options within my price range

8. Finding the best/cheapest health insurance coverage in Switzerland

This was interesting since most prices are not publicly available and are gated behind a meeting

ChatGPT Operator did what it could, and presented me with a good blog for me to read further

9. Finding a top-rated dog walker in Vancouver BC

This is no easy task, so I wanted to test how well ChatGPT Operator could handle it

To my surprise, I got 3 really solid options at the end

Overall, I was very impressed by the research preview of Operator.

I loved that it can do tasks for me as I do other work, and simply ping me when it needs me to "take over"

I also really enjoyed the saved tasks tab, and adding Custom Instructions for specific websites.

But it's important to note that Operator is still a research preview and is improving.

I found that:

-Quite a few sites were blocked after they detected the AI
-There's a limited set of partner integrations
-It's true purpose is to take actions across the web (more below)

Operator *operates* within ChatGPT, but it's a completely different tool.

Its output lengths are small, and its true purpose is to take actions across the web (typing, clicking, scrolling).

Meaning it's not like ChatGPT, which can produce essays and write long code

With every new tool, comes a new way of using it optimally.

E.g. with GPT-4, CoT prompting produced the best results, but prompting o1 best is completely different.

The exact same thing is happening here with Operator, and I'm 100% just scratching the surface with these tests.

The future of tech work is here. And personally, I'm incredibly excited about it.

Agents can do the boring work, so I can spend more time doing what I love.

I'll be publicly sharing all the ways I automate my work with agents, so follow me @rowancheung for more.

Lastly, big thanks to @OpenAI for granting me early access. I had a ton of fun early testing Operator.

If you want to support my work, like/retweet the first tweet of this thread to share with friends:

https://x.com/rowancheung/status/1882489477769072779

I'll be writing more about my early experiences and how Operator works in tomorrow's newsletter.

If you want it, you can join 900,000 other readers keeping up with everything going on in AI here (it's free): therundown.ai/subscribe