OpenAI product chief says world is ready for ChatGPT Work

Sottiaux, who oversees API, agent infrastructure, enterprise, ChatGPT and Codex, explained that ChatGPT Work is an effort to bring the power of coding agents to a broader population. "We wanted to bring the power of coding agents to everyone," he said. The technology was first built for a forgiving technical audience through Codex, and OpenAI now believes the technology is mature enough to be diffused to a much wider audience.

ChatGPT Work is available to Plus subscribers at $20 per month. Sottiaux argued that the utility users receive justifies the price. "The more value and the more utility that we generate for users, the more they will be willing to also pay for some part of that utility," he said, echoing how ChatGPT itself has been positioned.

The interview touched on whether workers are ready for a product that lets the model take the lead rather than presenting a user interface with many choices. Sottiaux pointed to rapid adoption as evidence. "We definitely see that the world seems to be ready," he said, noting that the service has hit 20 million users. He praised the product's design as "simple but powerful, simple but uncompromising."

Sottiaux said OpenAI's approach to product design is to build highly capable models and then find the simplest, most natural way to engage with them. The company has seen growth in ChatGPT Voice, which he said is part of a longer trend toward technology adapting to humans rather than requiring humans to learn how to use it.

He also framed ChatGPT Work as part of OpenAI's mission to bring everyone along with the technology. "The mission of OpenAI is to bring everyone along," he said, adding that the platform can handle long, complicated tasks autonomously in a "delightful and safe" way.