A Look Inside ChatGPT’s New ‘App Store’

Earlier this year, OpenAI announced ChatGPT applications. Please note this is not a ChatGPT application: This hasn't happened for over a couple of years now.. On the other hand, ChatGPT applications are programs that run inside ChatGPT. You can access them in any conversation using ChatGPT – in fact, they can appear depending on the context of the conversation.

These are not necessarily applications that OpenAI creates itself; rather, here you will find options based on applications that you can use yourself. The initial batch of apps included in the feature's rollout included Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow—big apps you've likely used before.

While talking to ChatGPT, you can ask the bot to help you book a flight to Paris through Expedia, find a specific listing through Zillow, or create a presentation slide using Canva. From OpenAI's perspective, this adds a lot of additional functionality to ChatGPT that the company couldn't offer on its own. OpenAI doesn't need to build an apartment search tool into ChatGPT; he might just pull in Zillow. It also doesn't escape me that the more applications OpenAI integrates into ChatGPT, the less likely it is that you will have to leave ChatGPT to do something in another application – but that's none of my business.

The ChatGPT “app store” is not actually a store.

Speaking of additional applications, the company plans to expand their number over time as developers create ChatGPT-compatible extensions for their programs. This was part of yesterday's news: OpenAI now allows developers to bulk submit apps to ChatGPT. What's more, these apps will be housed in an “app directory,” although many on the Internet call it an app store. (No payment is required, however, so an app directory might actually be a more appropriate description.) You'll find this new app directory in the ChatGPT sidebar, called “Applications.”

Based on the tag attached to its name on ChatGPT, the Apps appears to be in beta testing. Here you'll find a rotating slide advertising some of the service's biggest apps, like Canva and Zillow, and below that are rows of apps to choose from. Currently, apps are sorted into Featured, Lifestyle, and Productivity categories, with no option to include all apps. (But they seem to be completely separated between lifestyle and performance.) There are many There are already options here. Some of them made headlines this week, e.g. photoshop And Apple Musicwhile others have arrived more quietly, such as Asana, Uber and Target. It's not just traditional apps like Zillow or Spotify that are covered here. OpenAI is also considering “connector” serviceslike Google Drive, like “apps”.

You can click on any application in the catalog to see what you can do with it. Slack, for example, says you can view your chats and messages to summarize discussions, create summaries, and provide replies. You can check your Asana tasks to generate progress reports and status updates. Outlook says you can create “discussion topics” and generate follow-ups based on your emails and calendar events. Although there is a brief description under each heading, you will need to drill down to each service to see the full picture of what it actually offers.

Here are the applications I see currently. Just note that this may not be a complete list, especially as OpenAI continues to add new applications to the service:

• Adobe Acrobat

• Adobe Express

• Adobe Photoshop

• Agentforce Sales

• Yeah!

• Air table

• AllTrails

• Amplitude

• Apple Music

• Asana

• Atlasian Bramble

• Azure boards

• Base camp

• Reservation.com

• Box

• Canvas

• Clay

• Cloudy

• Conductor

• Coursera

• Dalupa

• DoorDash

• Dropbox

• Eligible

• Expedia

• Figma

• Problems with GitLab

• Google Drive

• Help Scout

• Hexagon

• High level

• Hugging Face

• instacart

• Intuit Credit Karma

• Intuit

• Intuit TurboTax

• Khan Academy

• Klaviyo

• Linear

• Cute

• LSEG

• Monday.com

• Morningstar

• Netlife

• Concept

• OpenTable

• Outlook Calendar

• Outlook email

• Peloton

• Pipedrive

• PitchBook

• Ramp

• Repeat

• SharePoint

• Weak

• Spotify

• Stripe

• Target

• Teams

• Teamwork.com

• Fork

• Thumbtack

• Tripadvisor

• Uber

• Uber Eats

• Verseilles

• Zillow

• Zoho

• Zoho Find out

• Increase

If you're an avid ChatGPT user and frequently switch between it and any of the apps on this list, there might be some usefulness here. Programmers may find the integration with Hugging Face and Lovable useful, and Photoshop users will be able to take advantage of the AI ​​image editing tools this integration provides. But I'm still left with the feeling that this is more of a gimmick than anything else: I don't need to connect Slack to ChatGPT to generate follow-ups for me: I'm perfectly capable of answering emails myself and managing my own calendar, so there's no need to connect Outlook or another email client to the bot. Perhaps future updates will help me connect generative AI to all aspects of my work and personal life, but I'm not convinced yet.