Hands-on: OpenAI’s Dot feels like a coworker, not a personal shopper

The Verge’s Allison Johnson spent several days with a Dot on a $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro account. Like Meta’s Muse, Dots have blobby avatars and names you choose, and you chat in one window while watching the agent work on a virtual machine in another. For now you get one Dot.

Her verdict is that Dots behave like business software that can use other software. The Dot’s virtual machine comes with apps like Blender and GIMP, the desktop ChatGPT app can give it access to your own computer, and you can call your Dot to talk a problem through. She sums it up as Codex for regular people.

It did take on chores she says she would never have got to, and with some help signing in to Uber Eats it eventually ordered her teriyaki. Still, she did not find it worth $100 a month for her own work, and thinks it fits someone running a new business better.

Because Dots are paid up front, she argues, they may face less pressure to make money in other ways than free agents like Muse.