Would you hire an AI that never clocks off?

OpenAI held its developer conference on September 29 and the announcement that matters to a business owner is not a model. It is a colleague. OpenAI calls them Dots: agents that live inside ChatGPT, run on the GPT-6 Astra model this column covered three weeks ago, and, in OpenAI’s words, “can work towards your goals 24/7.”

Each Dot gets its own computer in the cloud with its own browser. It can be reached from the ChatGPT app, from Slack, and by voice call, and it connects to more than 4,000 apps through plugins, including your email and calendar. It remembers what you told it last week, learns from your feedback, and when you have not given it anything to do it does read-only research on its own initiative through the apps you have connected. The first Dot is included at no extra charge on the Pro plans and on Business Premium seats. It is not on Free, Go or Plus, it is not yet available to Pro subscribers in Europe or the UK, and OpenAI says more Dots will be available later.

The rest of the conference matters less to this column but is worth a line. GPT-6.1 Sol arrived as a cheaper model at a fifth of Astra’s price per token and is available to Plus subscribers in the Work and Codex modes, and a new Pro 500 tier at US$500 a month appeared for very heavy users. If you did the two-hour bake-off from Week 15, Sol is the one to add to the table.