How OpenAI turned its coding tools into dots, an always-on personal assistant
Alexander Embiricos, the OpenAI executive responsible for dots, never wants to have a meeting with someone else's AI agent.
OpenAI has entered the realm of AI personal assistants with its latest offering, dots. This always-on AI assistant operates in the background, continuously working to help users manage their tasks and improve productivity. Dots is available for subscribers to OpenAI's Pro tier or higher, priced at $100 a month.
Inspired by the success of other AI personal assistants like Meta's Muse, OpenAI decided to release dots at its developer day in late September. Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI's enterprise product team, explained the product's origins and its development into an intuitive and useful tool for users.
Embiricos noted that the product team aimed to make AI feel accessible and intuitive to users. This meant repackaging the functionalities of OpenAI's models to provide a more user-friendly experience. The name 'dots' was chosen to symbolize the assistant's ubiquitous presence in users' lives.
An AI agent like dots does not require constant prompting, as it can think ahead and offer proactive assistance. While the assistant can flag calendar conflicts and upcoming deadlines, it may not always provide timely information. Embiricos shared an example of how dots helped an engineer at a drone delivery startup identify an outage before the engineer noticed it himself.
As with any AI agent, there are concerns about the personal data required for the assistant to function effectively. OpenAI has implemented privacy controls to protect user data, allowing users to turn off model training and control access to resources within their computer. However, these controls are not granular, and the assistant can be somewhat pushy in its requests for access.
While AI agents like dots can be fun and demonstrate impressive capabilities, scaling them for widespread business use presents challenges. Users may not appreciate the assistance, and businesses may lack the necessary infrastructure to support such tools. Embiricos acknowledged that there is still room for improvement in building out more granular privacy controls for the assistant.
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