And ChatGPT is itself moving up in the world, from a chat window toward more like an operating system. At OpenAI’s most recent developer event, the company debuted an Apps SDK that gives developers the tools to create full-fledged software experiences with ChatGPT, teased deep integrations with popular services and described the future of the chatbot less as a place where answers appear and more as a place where apps run.
Why OpenAI Is Trying To Mold ChatGPT Into An Operating System
Operating systems offer a standard runtime, a consistent UI, identity and permissions management, and the marketplace software needs to thrive. Now, OpenAI is vying for that mantle in conversational computing. Executives described a near-term change in which ChatGPT isn’t just a Q&A interface but a gateway to business services and software—both the tools it already has available today as well as new apps, built natively on top of the model.
The pivot aligns with scale. OpenAI has claimed that ChatGPT supports approximately 100 million weekly active users and millions of developers use its APIs, with a substantial number of Fortune 500 companies “experimenting” on the stack. Turning that distribution into an app platform is the obvious next step—and a defensive one as rival AIs from the world’s largest platforms race to own the interface layer.
From Inline Bots To Full-Screen Apps Inside ChatGPT
OpenAI has threatened touchy-feely stuff before via plugins and custom GPTs, but those just felt like tools leashed to a text exchange. The new Apps SDK goes a step further. In onstage demos, an app from Canva inside ChatGPT made multiple poster designs when asked and then turned them into a slide deck without taking you out of the conversation. In a Zillow app, listings got filtered using natural language, rather than a maze of toggles or swipes — an indicator of how AI can collapse multi-step UI flows into simply an intent.
Apps are able to commandeer the canvas at full screen. That allows for more sophisticated layouts, a bit of state you can keep around, and workflows that appear more like native software instead of chat responses. Early partners include Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia and Spotify — with more on the way as Okta expands its SDK.
The Opportunities The Apps SDK Offers Developers
Developers, the promise goes, will get a single surface—a place to build interactive, adaptive and personalized apps that can be driven by either conversation, UI components or both. The SDK is in preview with a review of the listings coming later this year. Apps, the company says, will be available to all users, not just paid subscribers — and that expands potential reach immediately.
Beneath the surface, acting like an OS is going to require good answers to OS-grade problems. Developers will demand clear permissioning for data and tools, strong sandboxing and isolation, consistent component libraries, observability for model decisions, and predictable performance. Cost and latency are a concern: more complex agentic flows and larger context windows can prove expensive and slow; the platform will require tooling to optimize calls, cache results better than it currently does without impacting experience.
There’s also the migration path. Many teams have already bought plugins or custom GPTs. OpenAI wants to figure out how to turn the Apps SDK into an upgrade, not a fork—ideally with compatibility layers, easy packaging and clean APIs for state, storage and authentication.
The Race And The Stakes Of AI App Platforms
OpenAI isn’t the only company chasing the assistant-as-platform future. Google is integrating Gemini Extensions more tightly with Workspace and Android. Microsoft is promoting Copilot and its companion, Copilot Studio, across Windows and Office — layers it has built on top of years of plugin work. App Intents and Siri are being expanded with on-device intelligence to help broker tasks between apps from Apple. Amazon is optimizing Q for enterprise workflows. The winner will be the assistant that makes third-party software both simpler and more powerful, without requiring users to relearn everything.
What’s unique here is ChatGPT’s neutrality: it is not affiliated with one operating system or hardware stack. If OpenAI can make it work with reliable policy enforcement and enterprise-grade privacy, if they can interop easily with identity providers, while keeping the conversational layer intuitive—if all that can happen, then it becomes the cross-platform “runtime” for everyday tasks.
User Experience And Safety Questions Loom
The change should feel straightforward for end users. Now you can invoke an app by name while in a prompt, and ChatGPT will propose a suitable option according to context. Over time, OpenAI plans to introduce more agentive behavior: assistants that can complete multi-step tasks and can work across apps proactively, with a user’s permission.
That raises familiar questions. How are consent requests and directives memorized? How are enterprise admins’ actions logged? What about sensitive data as it moves between apps? Independent frameworks from the likes of NIST and standards committees for ISO AI emphasize transparency, provenance and risk management—principles that the platform will need to embody, rather than just cite.
If the Apps SDK and early partner demos are any indication, ChatGPT is gearing up to be more than just an answering destination. This is the place where software happens, it wants to be saying. The coming six months will reveal whether OpenAI can marry the fluidity of conversation with the dependability of an operating system — and whether developers and users come to believe that an AI-first app platform is where their daily work should reside.
