On Monday, OpenAI unveiled a new way to embed third-party apps directly into ChatGPT. At the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco, CEO Sam Altman said the move would “enable a new generation of apps that are adaptive, interactive, and personalized, that you can chat with.”
Starting today, some developers will be able to use a preview version of a new Apps software development kit (SDK) to build apps within ChatGPT using open standards. The ability to distribute these apps is currently limited to a handful of big partners. Altman showed off several examples of how these apps would ultimately work within ChatGPT. The demo featured Spotify, Canva, and Zillow apps appearing inside a chat and responding to typed commands.
In one example, OpenAI software engineer Alexi Christakis launched a chat directed at the Canva app and prompted Canva to draw up posters for a dog-walking business. From there, he asked for a pitch deck in order to raise capital for the business.
Christakis then asked ChatGPT to suggest a city that would be ideal to expand the business into (it offered Pittsburgh, for those wondering). Next he called up a Zillow ChatGPT app and asked it to show homes for sale in the city. This brought up an interactive map showing houses for sale. Christakis asked ChatGPT to refine the results to just three-bedroom houses with a yard.
Altman said that OpenAI plans to introduce new ways for developers to monetize their ChatGPT apps, including methods for buying things through the chatbot. “Soon we’ll offer an agentic commerce protocol, with instant checkout from right within ChatGPT,” Altman said.
This is not OpenAI’s first effort to introduce ChatGPT apps. The company announced a way to build custom widgets or GPTs at its developer conference two years ago. When the GPT Store officially launched in January 2024, OpenAI said that developers had created over 3 million custom GPTs. Ultimately, however, the widgets did not prove a big hit.