Nick Turley, the head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, has shared his ambitious vision for turning the popular chatbot ChatGPT into something much bigger than just a conversational AI tool.
In a recent interview, Turley revealed that he sees ChatGPT evolving into a new type of operating system, one that could fundamentally change how people interact with software and digital services. This bold vision represents a major shift in how OpenAI thinks about its most successful product, which now serves 800 million weekly active users around the world.
He compared the platform to being in its “command line era” where users have to type everything they want without clear visual options or organized menus. Despite this limitation, the product has managed to reach massive adoption, growing to serve what amounts to about 10 percent of the world’s population every week. Turley finds it remarkable that ChatGPT has achieved this scale with such a basic interface, suggesting there is enormous potential for growth once the platform adds more features and structure.
When Turley joined OpenAI in 2022, his job was to help commercialize the company’s research and turn it into products that people could actually use. He has clearly succeeded in that mission, but now he’s thinking much bigger. The vision he outlined involves transforming ChatGPT into a platform where third-party developers can build applications that users access through conversations with the AI. Instead of opening different websites or apps on your phone, you would simply tell ChatGPT what you want to do, and it would connect you with the right application to get it done.
According to Turley, this is necessary because OpenAI cannot build everything that users might need. The company is not going to create a music streaming service to compete with Spotify, or build a travel booking platform to rival Expedia, or develop educational content to match what Coursera offers. Instead, OpenAI wants to partner with companies that already excel in these areas and make their services accessible through ChatGPT. This approach allows ChatGPT to become a central hub for accessing all kinds of digital services without OpenAI having to rebuild every type of application from scratch.
Turley looks at how web browsers have evolved over the last decade and sees a similar path for ChatGPT. Browsers like Chrome and Safari have essentially become operating systems in their own right, not technically speaking, but in the sense that most people now do their work through browser-based applications rather than traditional desktop software. People check their email, edit documents, manage spreadsheets, and handle countless other tasks without ever leaving their browser. Turley believes ChatGPT can follow this same pattern, becoming the primary interface through which people access digital tools and services.
OpenAI has been working toward this goal for some time. The company previously launched features like ChatGPT plugins and the GPT Store, which were early attempts at creating an ecosystem of third-party applications. However, those efforts did not gain much traction with users or developers. This time around, OpenAI seems to have learned from those experiences and is taking a different approach that integrates apps more deeply into the core ChatGPT experience rather than putting them in a separate store that users have to visit.
The new strategy announced at OpenAI’s recent developer conference involves allowing companies to build apps that work directly within ChatGPT conversations. Major brands like Expedia, DoorDash, Uber, Instacart, and others are already developing these applications. When a user asks ChatGPT to help them book a flight or order food, the AI can now connect directly with these services and facilitate the transaction. This creates a seamless experience where users never have to leave their chat to accomplish what they want.
For developers and companies, this represents a significant opportunity. Building an app for ChatGPT means getting access to 800 million weekly users who are already engaged in conversations where they might need various services. Unlike previous attempts where apps lived in a separate marketplace, these new applications are part of ChatGPT’s core experience, making them much more likely to be discovered and used. Developers can also create more interactive and sophisticated experiences than were possible with earlier approaches.
When users make purchases or book services through ChatGPT, OpenAI can initiate those transactions and capture out of the revenue. This changes ChatGPT from being just a subscription product into a platform that can generate income from commerce happening within it. For partner companies, being featured in ChatGPT could become a major source of business, similar to how being prominently placed in Google search results or the Apple App Store drives significant traffic and sales.
Privacy and data access are important considerations as Third-party apps will need some access to user information to function properly, but OpenAI wants to ensure this happens transparently and with user control. The company has published guidelines requiring apps to collect only the minimum data necessary to perform their function, and OpenAI reviews each app to make sure it complies with these standards. Turley mentioned that the company is considering building features that would give users fine-grained control over what data they share with different apps, similar to how smartphones let you choose whether to share your location “just this time” or “always.”
One particularly interesting idea Turley discussed is the concept of partitioned memory in ChatGPT. This would allow users to keep certain types of conversations separate from others. For example, you might want conversations about your health to be kept private from apps that help you discover music or plan travel. By creating separate memory spaces, users could choose to share some information with certain apps while keeping other conversations completely private.
The transformation of ChatGPT into an operating system is clearly a long-term project that will unfold over several years. OpenAI is not trying to figure everything out in advance but rather launching the basic framework and learning from how users and developers engage with it. This approach allows the company to be more responsive to what people actually want rather than building an elaborate system based on assumptions that might turn out to be wrong.
Beyond ChatGPT itself, OpenAI is reportedly working on other ways to expand its reach, including potentially developing a web browser and partnering with former Apple designer Jony Ive on hardware devices. These efforts suggest that OpenAI’s ambitions go far beyond just having a chatbot, with plans to create an entire ecosystem of products and services tied together by AI.
If ChatGPT does become an operating system in the way Turley envisions, it would change how people interact with technology, moving from the current model of using many separate apps to a unified interface that connects you with whatever service you need.
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