OpenAI's masterplan for ChatGPT, and Concierge Internet
Apps SDK is about absorbing context, not providing an app directory
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In the coming months and years, ChatGPT faces two big challenges:
Figure out how to monetize ChatGPT with advertisements, without alienating its loyal customers or hurting engagement, and maintaining marketshare
On the productivity side, make ChatGPT the “single pane of glass” for getting work done across different apps, while staving off competitors like Anthropic who are creating a loyal fan base with Skills, Claude Code, etc.
Two months ago, I commented that OpenAI will struggle to beat Google if ChatGPT remained a text-driven chatbot, and it needed to evolve into something different.
Since then, a lot has been revealed about how OpenAI plans to evolve ChatGPT, so it can better compete with Google, and kill two birds - the ad business and becoming the single pane of glass for productivity apps - with one stone.
The two main developments are:
Fiji Simo (CEO of OpenAI’s apps) officially announcing that ChatGPT will incorporate more dynamic/generative UI in its responses. Here, she is foreshadowing that ChatGPT will move away from a text-dominated experience into a more visual, interactive one. For example, you will start getting cards and GUI responses for queries like (“what’s Shohei Ohtani’s stats this year?”)
The general availability of Apps SDK, which are the rails for building these dynamic experiences for 3rd party developers. Once companies like Atlassian, Salesforce, etc building their apps on ChatGPT, then ChatGPT will essentially become the context manager across all 3rd party apps. And since context is king in AI, this adds immense value and leverage to ChatGPT versus other individual SaaS apps.
Unsurprisingly, dynamic UIs and Apps SDK are related. It’s useful to think of Apps SDK as the means (SDK) to inject dynamic experiences into ChatGPT. It goes beyond providing data connectors, in that you can now inject experiences. So the real through-line here is dynamism.
So why is ChatGPT embracing dynamism, more interactivity, and deeper integrations with 3rd party apps beyond just data connectors?
If you guessed “so they can create more ad surfaces and engagement”, that’s only 30% correct.