AI agents enhance workflows with ChatGPT Work & GPT-5.6

ChatGPT Work turns ChatGPT into an AI agent that can complete multi-step projects across connected apps and desktop tools with GPT-5.6 powering the new experience.

ChatGPT Work is designed for longer assignments instead of one-off prompts. It can gather information from connected apps and workflows, create spreadsheets, presentations, documents and web apps, then continue working for hours by breaking larger projects into smaller steps.

The new experience runs on GPT-5.6 and includes built-in Codex capabilities for reasoning through complex tasks, working with templates and reference files, and carrying context across multiple stages of a project.

OpenAI said more than 5 million people use Codex each week, with more than 1 million using it outside software development. Codex’s growing use outside software development aligns with OpenAI’s push to bring AI agents into sales, finance, marketing and other business workflows.

Users can connect ChatGPT Work to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, SharePoint, email, calendars, CRM platforms and project management tools. ChatGPT can pull information from those services, create documents and analyses, and keep refining its work while users review progress and approve important actions.

OpenAI is also introducing Sites in ChatGPT as a public beta. Sites lets users turn projects into interactive websites or web apps, including dashboards, launch calendars, project trackers, internal portals and reports.

Scheduled Tasks lets users automate recurring work, trigger actions when specific events occur and monitor changes over time. The feature can update meeting agendas from Slack conversations or refresh presentations when feedback arrives by email.

ChatGPT web interface open to Plugins page, listing various plugin options on a white panel, centered against a dark starry space background on a computer desktop

Users can connect ChatGPT Work to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Drive, SharePoint, email, calendars, CRM platforms and project management tools. Image credit: OpenAI

The ChatGPT desktop app for Mac and Windows also adds several new capabilities. ChatGPT can work with local files and desktop apps, browse the web through a built-in browser, and use Computer Use to click, type and move files while completing tasks in the background.

ChatGPT’s new capabilities could handle repetitive tasks for users, but you may want to think hard about letting an independent agent access even more of your files.

In March 2026, OpenAI outlined its vision for a unified desktop app that combines AI tools into a single workspace.

Codex becomes part of the main ChatGPT app

OpenAI is merging the standalone Codex app into the new ChatGPT desktop app beginning July 9. Developers will retain Codex’s coding features, including inline editing within diffs, pull request review, support for multiple repositories and faster Computer Use powered by GPT-5.6.

The existing ChatGPT desktop app will be renamed ChatGPT Classic. OpenAI also plans to sunset Atlas, its standalone browser, while expanding the ChatGPT Chrome extension so users can work directly from Chrome’s sidebar.

Bringing those capabilities together reduces the need to switch between separate AI products for coding, research and general productivity. Instead, OpenAI is positioning ChatGPT as the primary interface for those tasks.

ChatGPT Work adds enterprise controls

ChatGPT Work begins rolling out on July 9 for Pro, Enterprise and Edu users on the web and mobile. OpenAI said Plus and Business users will receive access over the following several days.

Computer screen displaying a document editor on the left and slide thumbnails on the right, all over a space-themed starry background on a desktop monitor

OpenAI is merging the standalone Codex app into the new ChatGPT desktop app beginning July 9. Image credit: OpenAI

The updated ChatGPT desktop app is available globally for Mac and Windows. Chat, Work and Codex are available in the desktop app on every plan, including Free, although ChatGPT Work is rolling out first to Pro, Enterprise and Edu subscribers before expanding to Plus and Business plans.

Recent issues with the ChatGPT Mac app highlight why security becomes more important as OpenAI gives the desktop app greater access to local files and tools. ChatGPT Work follows the same usage model as Codex, with more complex projects consuming more of a user’s included usage.

Enterprise and Edu administrators can manage access to connected tools, company data and available actions through centralized controls. The Compliance API gives organizations visibility into ChatGPT Work conversations and actions, while an auto-review system checks sensitive actions before they occur.

OpenAI said internal adversarial testing showed the system blocked attempts to extract protected data, though the company hasn’t published independent testing or validation of those results.

ChatGPT Work expands ChatGPT from a conversational assistant into an AI agent for extended workflows. Whether businesses trust an AI agent with routine work across company apps may prove just as important as the technology itself.

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Stephan Dorsey

Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.

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Recent Reviews

Meta pulled facial recognition code from its smart glasses app one day after WIRED found it

TL;DR

Meta stripped NameTag facial recognition code from its AI app one day after WIRED exposed it on 50 million phones. Meta says no decision has been made.

Meta removed nearly all traces of an unreleased facial recognition system from its smart glasses companion app on Friday, one day after WIRED reported that the software had been quietly embedded in an app installed on more than 50 million phones. The feature, which Meta internally called NameTag, was designed to convert faces captured by the company’s Ray-Ban smart glasses into unique biometric signatures and compare them against a database stored on the user’s device. WIRED also found that faces the system failed to recognise were cropped, indexed, and stored locally for future processing.

Andy Stone, Meta’s vice president of communications, told WIRED on Monday that the feature is “purely exploratory,” adding that no final decision has been made on what to do with it. That characterisation sits uneasily with the evidence WIRED documented. The version of Meta AI published the day of WIRED’s Thursday report contained several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition, a process for running the NameTag recognition pipeline, and a “Person recognised” alert the app would have shown if someone were identified.

Friday’s release stripped all of it out, along with a folder where the app would have stored the cropped images and biometric signatures of unrecognised faces. Meta did not answer WIRED’s questions about why the code was removed or whether the changes were planned before the story was published. A few fragments remain in the latest version, including an internal debug menu label and a dormant link meant to open a recognised person’s profile, pointing to parts of the system that are no longer there.

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The gap between Meta’s public statements and the code WIRED found is the central tension. Before the Thursday report, Stone dismissed the findings by writing that the company could not answer questions about how the system would work because “the feature does not exist.” Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s chief technology officer, called the reporting “incredibly misleading” and “absolutely dishonest.” Yet the code was functional enough to include three AI models, one to detect faces, another to crop them, and a third to encode them as biometric data, all embedded in the companion app for a product already at the centre of a mounting privacy crisis.

Meta declined to answer ten questions WIRED posed before publishing, including whether it had already created the database of face profiles NameTag uses, how long the app retains photographs and biometric data of unrecognised people, and whether that data would ever be sent back to Meta’s servers. The company also did not respond to questions about whether it was building NameTag for blind or low-vision users, or to criticism from privacy advocates who warned the system could let stalkers and abusers identify strangers in public.

NameTag first surfaced in February, when The New York Times, citing internal Meta documents, reported that the company was developing face recognition for its smart glasses and considering a launch as early as this year. One internal memo reportedly described releasing the feature during a “dynamic political environment” when privacy and civil liberties advocates would be distracted by other concerns. WIRED subsequently found that much of NameTag’s machinery had been built into the Meta AI app as early as January, months before any public acknowledgement, adding another layer to the company’s pattern of shipping first and disclosing later when it comes to its smart glasses.

Kade Crockford, director of the technology for liberty programme at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, said the removal does not undo the original decision to ship the code and pointed to it as evidence that consumer privacy needs stronger legal protection than Congress has been willing to provide. The Massachusetts House of Representatives last week unanimously passed a consumer privacy bill that, if enacted as written, would impose strong enforcement provisions including a private right of action allowing aggrieved users to sue. “State lawmakers need to do their job and step up to protect consumer privacy,” Crockford said.

“Meta’s sneaky tactics in slipping the face-recognition code into its smart glasses show exactly why data privacy bills need the teeth of strong enforcement,” Crockford added. “Companies like Meta prioritise their bottom line, so lawmakers need to speak in the only language its C-suite understands.” Whether a code removal prompted by investigative reporting constitutes a victory or merely a tactical retreat depends on what Meta does next, and on whether the regulatory pressure building on both sides of the Atlantic produces enforceable consequences before the feature quietly returns under a different name.

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Stephan Dorsey

Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.