OpenAI Releases an Agent That Uses a Web Browser for You

Operator can go to websites and click, type, and scroll to complete a task — booking a restaurant, ordering groceries, filling a form — checking in with you before anything irreversible. It's available to the $200-a-month tier and often needs help.

OpenAI released a program today called Operator that browses the web on your behalf. Give it a task — book a table for four on Friday, order the ingredients for this recipe, fill out this form — and it opens a web browser in the cloud and does it, moving the cursor, clicking, typing, and scrolling the way you would. It shows you the screen as it works, asks before it enters payment details or sends anything, and hands control back when it hits something it can't handle.

It is the consumer version of the computer-using ability Anthropic showed in October, and it arrives first for people paying $200 a month. OpenAI partnered with companies including Instacart, OpenTable, and DoorDash so the program works smoothly on their sites.

In practice it is early. Reviewers this week describe it completing simple tasks — a reservation, a straightforward order — while getting stuck on anything unusual, asking for help often, and taking longer than doing the thing yourself. It can be blocked by the pop-ups and login walls that fill the modern web. OpenAI says it will improve and get cheaper.

The significance is the category, not the polish. For two years these programs answered questions. Now they take actions in the world, on real websites, with your credit card a click away. The first widely available one is slow and clumsy, the way the first ChatGPT was limited. The direction is a computer that operates itself, and this is the start of it.