July 18, 2025 • 14 mins
OpenAI officially launches the ChatGPT "Agent," a new feature allowing users to delegate complex digital tasks directly to AI, enabling autonomous online actions and decision-making.
Users can assign Agent tasks like travel planning, event bookings, detailed research, and personal schedule management, all without needing continuous interaction beyond the initial command.
ChatGPT Agent learns and adapts to individual preferences over time by analyzing previous user choices, creating a more personalized and efficient experience.
Integration with external services via APIs allows the Agent to seamlessly navigate multiple platforms, automatically completing bookings, research, or other digital tasks independently.
OpenAI has secured key partnerships with travel platforms, booking services, financial tools, and productivity apps to streamline these integrations and enhance usability.
Security and data privacy have become priority focuses, with OpenAI employing encryption and implementing clear data-usage policies and protective guidelines for sensitive personal information.
Built-in protective measures include preset limits to prevent unauthorized high-risk actions or financial transactions without explicit user verification and oversight.
Early user experiences with the ChatGPT Agent will critically influence public adoption and trust in AI-based autonomy; initial successes will likely expand future reliance and adoption.
Competitors, including Google's Gemini Assistant and Meta's autonomous AI tools, are launching similar automated agent services, intensifying pressure on OpenAI to deliver superior performance and privacy protections.
Analysts caution that long-term success requires consistent reliability, accuracy in task execution, and user confidence in AI decisions, aspects OpenAI pledges to address through regular updates and performance improvements.
OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT Agent marks an important advancement toward practical, widely accessible autonomous AI tools intended for daily user productivity.
Listen to this episode for a detailed exploration of OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent, how it functions, and what it means for AI-driven task automation.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that
shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
I'm your host, Will Walden. What if ChatGPT could become
your personal agent and independently complete your
(00:25):
daily tasks without your direct guidance?
So on Wednesday, Open AI unveiled a new ChatGPT feature
called Agent, designed specifically to autonomously
carry out tasks on behalf of you, its user.
Moving beyond simple chat bot conversations.
And Open AI released the Agent function officially after months
(00:47):
of internal testing and testing with users on a very short list.
And now they aim to push AI capabilities towards performing
real world actions without continuous human oversight.
Now this agent is really cool itit lets users delegate complex
multi step tasks directly to ChatGPT, such as booking travel
(01:11):
reservations, conducting detailed research, or managing
personal scheduling. Now once given a task, the agent
navigates multiple websites, gathers relevant information,
makes decisions and completes actions online independently.
For example, a user might instruct the agent to plan a
weekend trip to San Francisco and it would book the best rated
(01:35):
flights, hotels, and activities entirely without user
intervention beyond the initial request.
Now what you could do is you could tell it what airline you
would like to use, what your price race, what your price
range is for your flight in yourhotel and how much money you can
spend on your activities and what kind of activities you
(01:57):
like. And it will search for all of
that for you without any intervention beyond the initial
prompt. Now, Open AI designed the agent
to understand the user's preferences and to act
accordingly, refining its actions over time by analyzing
past interactions with you. Now, this personalization allows
(02:18):
it to better anticipate individual users needs,
selecting choices closely aligned with specific habits
that you have, and also your tastes.
How the agent's effectiveness depends on its ability to
continuously learn from each action, gradually reducing the
need for explicit instructions. So if ChatGPT sends you an
(02:41):
airline that's a little bit out of your price range for the
flight, then you can go back andyou can prompt it again and say
that flight was a little bit tooexpensive.
Please find me one that's less expensive.
Here's my price range now. Also, if they book you on trips
and you don't like the activities that they assigned
(03:02):
for you or they want you to do, then of course you can tell them
you don't like it. It's like having literally a
personal assistant right in the palm of your hand, right in your
phone, which is incredible. I remember, OK, so this is kind
of dating me, but my mom and I used to go to the travel agent
in town. This is before the Internet was
(03:23):
even a thing. There were things called travel
agents. There was no Google Flights.
There was no like just Google a trip that you want to do.
You'd have to go into an office.And these services are still
available, but it's, you know, it's like you pay extra for it
and it's not democratized like flights are now.
But you'd go into an office and you'd talk to somebody and you
(03:46):
tell them where you want to go one time.
You want to go to Niagara Falls?This is a real world example.
We had to go to. We want to go to Niagara Falls.
My mom and dad hadn't been therein 10 years.
They didn't really know what to do.
There's no Internet, so you don't know what's there right
now. And we lived 3 or 4 hours away
from Niagara Falls, so we didn'treally know what to do.
(04:07):
We didn't know where to look. So we went to a travel agent and
we told the travel agent what our budget was.
I remember the lady was very nice.
She complimented me on my Montego Bay T-shirt that I had
when I was a kid, which I boughtnot in Montego Bay, but at a
department store in town. And she was very courteous.
(04:27):
She gave us maps. She, which is incredible as
well, like a paper map. And you have to, you know, you
unfolded it. And she told us, you know, you
shouldn't fly. You should probably drive there
because it's cheaper to drive. And here's a map.
Can your car make it there? And my mom said, yeah, of course
I can. So she gave us a map, told us
(04:48):
along the way, she circled things along the way, like, you
want to stop here? You want to stop, you know,
these 5 or 6 different places, Here's a great place to eat.
You know, you're going to have three kids in the car.
They're going to be bathroom breaks.
So within the first two hours, like, pull over here, go, you
know, go get McDonald's or whatever it was.
But sure enough, after that interaction was done, my mom had
(05:11):
a whole plan for the trip to Niagara Falls. 4 hours there, 4
hours home, things to do In between.
We went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, which had a
bunch of like really interestingcrazy stuff.
I remember that and I was a little kid, so I can still
remember this vividly. There's a wax museum we went to
(05:32):
and there's like a like a, a restaurant that was, I think it
was sort of like a Space Needle kind of thing, like a Seattle
Space Needle. I can't really remember exactly
what it was, but I remember we did that cool trip and when my
mom got back, she was very excited that everything was
taken care of. The travel agent had booked a
(05:53):
hotel for us. The travel agent had booked a
restaurant for us that night when we got into town.
When we got in Niagara Falls, they also booked us reservations
for some of the attractions, which is really cool.
And this is what Open AI does with the, with this new agent
thing. It's not just for trips, though.
(06:14):
You can have it do whatever you want it to do.
You know, trips are just one of the things that it can do.
You can, you can instruct it to do anything for you, anything
like a personal assistant would do for you.
So if you need to make appointments, you know, I have
a, here's my, here's my doctor'sappointment coming up.
(06:35):
You know, I need to get, I need to book a doctor's appointment.
Can you see if it's available orsomething like that?
And they would contact the doctor's office for you through
the contact form or maybe even do a call eventually.
I'm not sure if they could do phone calls yet, but possibly.
But those things are in the future.
I'm sure this is going to be a breakthrough product for Open
(06:58):
AI. Now, this functionality requires
integrating ChatGPT with external services.
Services though, leverages application programming
interfaces, which are APIs to interact directly with other
apps and platforms. Now Open AI had to establish
partnerships with major travel sites, booking services,
(07:20):
productivity platforms, and alsofinancial tools.
And these integrations enable the agent to execute tests
seamlessly, automating processesthat previously required manual
operations by users. So in the morning, if you wake
up, you can just give it a prompt like, hey, I'm I need to
rent a house in Atlanta, GA September 15th through the 30th
(07:48):
because I'm just going to stay there for a couple weeks and I
just want a house to stay at. Go find me a house to rent and
ChatGPT can find you that house and also give you the
information about which house you know.
Send you back some links and letyou know which one is the best
option for you and for your taste.
Pretty impressive so far. So they have to have security
(08:11):
and privacy. It's a major focus right now
during the agents development phase.
And this is all sensitive automated actions with personal
data. Opening Eye implemented strict
guidelines for this though, and there's technical safeguards to
protect user information, employing encryption and
rigorous data protection standards to achieve this.
(08:33):
The company is transparent aboutthis.
They tell you all the information that's collected and
they clearly explain how and whyuser data is stored, accessed,
and utilized during these automated tasks.
Now to facilitate the responsible use, Open AI
designed built in boundaries, restricting agent functionality
(08:54):
and sensitive or high risk scenarios.
These built in constraints prevent unauthorized purchases
of transactions above predefinedlimits without additional user
verification. The users retained full
visibility over the agent's activity while it's happening,
and they received regular summaries detailing actions
(09:15):
completed and decisions that were made by the agent.
So unlike a person, that's your agent who probably doesn't check
in all the time, open AI, enchant GPT, check in with you
after every part of the task, which is really great.
And you can tell them along the way, you know, if if you don't
like a part of what they're doing, and then you can tell
(09:36):
them to stop. Now there's challenges though,
on potential criticisms concerning automated decision
making. So the accuracy of some of the
things that they're going to come up with right off the bat,
probably not going to be great, probably going to be pretty good
and probably going to point you in the right direction.
(09:56):
And then you can tweak it in theappropriateness of the agents
independent actions as well. So you have to be careful about
how you prompt this thing because if you say, I just want
to stay in a place that's under $300, it's going to send you
every motel, then hotel under $300.00 for per night.
(10:17):
So, you know, that's then you'regonna have a huge list of like
roadside motels that are, you know, paid by the hour, which
wink, wink, you know what those kind are.
And also, you know, paid by the night and they're $70.00.
But like, they might not be the best place for you and your kids
to be. So ChatGPT, like you got to be
(10:37):
accurate and appropriate with your prompting as you tell
ChatGPT and the agent what to search for.
That's what we have to be reallycareful about, South.
Don't be broad with your statements.
Be very analytical with them andgive them absolutely everything
that you can think of, and then they'll do the actual work for
(10:59):
you. I'm going to test it out and
I'll come back with some more information for you on the next
episode, which will be dropping later today.
So please stay tuned for that. I'm going to go over the whole
thing and I'm going to work out the agent workflow as much as
possible and I'll let you know how that all works out.
So thank you so much for listening.
I have one ask of you, actually,I asked this yesterday, but I
(11:23):
never really ask for these kind of things.
I usually do it like once a weekjust because I don't want to
really. I don't really want to get into
it too much, but I've been doingthis show, I think we're at 900
episodes, something like that. Some ridiculous amount of
episodes. I've been doing it for like 4
years and in those four years I haven't really asked for
anything. I've never, you know, maybe
Patreon here and there or you know, follow the channel,
(11:47):
something like that. But I continue to do it every
morning, drop episodes every morning at 4:30 AM EST.
And I just need a favor from you.
If you could hit the follow or the subscribe button, that would
be great. That's one favor I need to ask.
2 favors actually, and that'll only take you a second, but the
(12:07):
channel is in this. This show is in dire need of
some financial backing and I'm going to ask this one more time
this week and this is the final time I'm going to ask this week.
If you have Venmo and you can send anything at all to Will Wil
Dash WALDON help support the show.
(12:32):
It goes directly into all of my costs for the show and it's been
really helpful. A few people have done it and I
want to give them shout outs because I told them I would last
time I did this and I didn't do it yesterday.
So I feel kind of bad about that.
But you know, I had JW again with another $5 donation, have
(13:01):
JS with A10, we have MH with 50,BSI can't say the full names,
but BS with $75. Thank you so much for all of
your donations and all of this helps me continue doing the
show. That's all I'm saying.
I put all my time and effort into this and I spend a lot of a
(13:25):
lot of time that I could be spending with my family I spent
doing the show and like getting ready for the show.
So I do sacrifice a lot for the show, even though it's only
around 10 minutes every day. So if you're new here, thank you
for listening. If you've been here for a while
and you've heard so many episodes, thank you for
listening as well. Thank you for being part of this
(13:46):
great community and thank you toeverybody who's supporting me
and supporting the show on Venmo.
I really do appreciate you and I'm going to find some people
have been D Ming me and asking me to find other ways for them
to help out, but they because they don't have Venmo.
So I'm going to get I'm going toget some other apps, cash app,
etcetera. So it can be very helpful that
(14:08):
way and I'll get it. I'll make a website for you so
you can go visit it and donate or whatever.
So that's it for now, everybody,thank you so much.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
I really do appreciate your support.
If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
(14:30):
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
to patreon.com/stage Zero. And please take care of
yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
This is a show where we discuss the critical crossroads that
shape SpaceX, Tesla X, The Boring Company, and Neurolink.
I'm your host, Will Walden. What if ChatGPT could become
your personal agent and independently complete your
(00:25):
daily tasks without your direct guidance?
So on Wednesday, Open AI unveiled a new ChatGPT feature
called Agent, designed specifically to autonomously
carry out tasks on behalf of you, its user.
Moving beyond simple chat bot conversations.
And Open AI released the Agent function officially after months
(00:47):
of internal testing and testing with users on a very short list.
And now they aim to push AI capabilities towards performing
real world actions without continuous human oversight.
Now this agent is really cool itit lets users delegate complex
multi step tasks directly to ChatGPT, such as booking travel
(01:11):
reservations, conducting detailed research, or managing
personal scheduling. Now once given a task, the agent
navigates multiple websites, gathers relevant information,
makes decisions and completes actions online independently.
For example, a user might instruct the agent to plan a
weekend trip to San Francisco and it would book the best rated
(01:35):
flights, hotels, and activities entirely without user
intervention beyond the initial request.
Now what you could do is you could tell it what airline you
would like to use, what your price race, what your price
range is for your flight in yourhotel and how much money you can
spend on your activities and what kind of activities you
(01:57):
like. And it will search for all of
that for you without any intervention beyond the initial
prompt. Now, Open AI designed the agent
to understand the user's preferences and to act
accordingly, refining its actions over time by analyzing
past interactions with you. Now, this personalization allows
(02:18):
it to better anticipate individual users needs,
selecting choices closely aligned with specific habits
that you have, and also your tastes.
How the agent's effectiveness depends on its ability to
continuously learn from each action, gradually reducing the
need for explicit instructions. So if ChatGPT sends you an
(02:41):
airline that's a little bit out of your price range for the
flight, then you can go back andyou can prompt it again and say
that flight was a little bit tooexpensive.
Please find me one that's less expensive.
Here's my price range now. Also, if they book you on trips
and you don't like the activities that they assigned
(03:02):
for you or they want you to do, then of course you can tell them
you don't like it. It's like having literally a
personal assistant right in the palm of your hand, right in your
phone, which is incredible. I remember, OK, so this is kind
of dating me, but my mom and I used to go to the travel agent
in town. This is before the Internet was
(03:23):
even a thing. There were things called travel
agents. There was no Google Flights.
There was no like just Google a trip that you want to do.
You'd have to go into an office.And these services are still
available, but it's, you know, it's like you pay extra for it
and it's not democratized like flights are now.
But you'd go into an office and you'd talk to somebody and you
(03:46):
tell them where you want to go one time.
You want to go to Niagara Falls?This is a real world example.
We had to go to. We want to go to Niagara Falls.
My mom and dad hadn't been therein 10 years.
They didn't really know what to do.
There's no Internet, so you don't know what's there right
now. And we lived 3 or 4 hours away
from Niagara Falls, so we didn'treally know what to do.
(04:07):
We didn't know where to look. So we went to a travel agent and
we told the travel agent what our budget was.
I remember the lady was very nice.
She complimented me on my Montego Bay T-shirt that I had
when I was a kid, which I boughtnot in Montego Bay, but at a
department store in town. And she was very courteous.
(04:27):
She gave us maps. She, which is incredible as
well, like a paper map. And you have to, you know, you
unfolded it. And she told us, you know, you
shouldn't fly. You should probably drive there
because it's cheaper to drive. And here's a map.
Can your car make it there? And my mom said, yeah, of course
I can. So she gave us a map, told us
(04:48):
along the way, she circled things along the way, like, you
want to stop here? You want to stop, you know,
these 5 or 6 different places, Here's a great place to eat.
You know, you're going to have three kids in the car.
They're going to be bathroom breaks.
So within the first two hours, like, pull over here, go, you
know, go get McDonald's or whatever it was.
But sure enough, after that interaction was done, my mom had
(05:11):
a whole plan for the trip to Niagara Falls. 4 hours there, 4
hours home, things to do In between.
We went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum, which had a
bunch of like really interestingcrazy stuff.
I remember that and I was a little kid, so I can still
remember this vividly. There's a wax museum we went to
(05:32):
and there's like a like a, a restaurant that was, I think it
was sort of like a Space Needle kind of thing, like a Seattle
Space Needle. I can't really remember exactly
what it was, but I remember we did that cool trip and when my
mom got back, she was very excited that everything was
taken care of. The travel agent had booked a
(05:53):
hotel for us. The travel agent had booked a
restaurant for us that night when we got into town.
When we got in Niagara Falls, they also booked us reservations
for some of the attractions, which is really cool.
And this is what Open AI does with the, with this new agent
thing. It's not just for trips, though.
(06:14):
You can have it do whatever you want it to do.
You know, trips are just one of the things that it can do.
You can, you can instruct it to do anything for you, anything
like a personal assistant would do for you.
So if you need to make appointments, you know, I have
a, here's my, here's my doctor'sappointment coming up.
(06:35):
You know, I need to get, I need to book a doctor's appointment.
Can you see if it's available orsomething like that?
And they would contact the doctor's office for you through
the contact form or maybe even do a call eventually.
I'm not sure if they could do phone calls yet, but possibly.
But those things are in the future.
I'm sure this is going to be a breakthrough product for Open
(06:58):
AI. Now, this functionality requires
integrating ChatGPT with external services.
Services though, leverages application programming
interfaces, which are APIs to interact directly with other
apps and platforms. Now Open AI had to establish
partnerships with major travel sites, booking services,
(07:20):
productivity platforms, and alsofinancial tools.
And these integrations enable the agent to execute tests
seamlessly, automating processesthat previously required manual
operations by users. So in the morning, if you wake
up, you can just give it a prompt like, hey, I'm I need to
rent a house in Atlanta, GA September 15th through the 30th
(07:48):
because I'm just going to stay there for a couple weeks and I
just want a house to stay at. Go find me a house to rent and
ChatGPT can find you that house and also give you the
information about which house you know.
Send you back some links and letyou know which one is the best
option for you and for your taste.
Pretty impressive so far. So they have to have security
(08:11):
and privacy. It's a major focus right now
during the agents development phase.
And this is all sensitive automated actions with personal
data. Opening Eye implemented strict
guidelines for this though, and there's technical safeguards to
protect user information, employing encryption and
rigorous data protection standards to achieve this.
(08:33):
The company is transparent aboutthis.
They tell you all the information that's collected and
they clearly explain how and whyuser data is stored, accessed,
and utilized during these automated tasks.
Now to facilitate the responsible use, Open AI
designed built in boundaries, restricting agent functionality
(08:54):
and sensitive or high risk scenarios.
These built in constraints prevent unauthorized purchases
of transactions above predefinedlimits without additional user
verification. The users retained full
visibility over the agent's activity while it's happening,
and they received regular summaries detailing actions
(09:15):
completed and decisions that were made by the agent.
So unlike a person, that's your agent who probably doesn't check
in all the time, open AI, enchant GPT, check in with you
after every part of the task, which is really great.
And you can tell them along the way, you know, if if you don't
like a part of what they're doing, and then you can tell
(09:36):
them to stop. Now there's challenges though,
on potential criticisms concerning automated decision
making. So the accuracy of some of the
things that they're going to come up with right off the bat,
probably not going to be great, probably going to be pretty good
and probably going to point you in the right direction.
(09:56):
And then you can tweak it in theappropriateness of the agents
independent actions as well. So you have to be careful about
how you prompt this thing because if you say, I just want
to stay in a place that's under $300, it's going to send you
every motel, then hotel under $300.00 for per night.
(10:17):
So, you know, that's then you'regonna have a huge list of like
roadside motels that are, you know, paid by the hour, which
wink, wink, you know what those kind are.
And also, you know, paid by the night and they're $70.00.
But like, they might not be the best place for you and your kids
to be. So ChatGPT, like you got to be
(10:37):
accurate and appropriate with your prompting as you tell
ChatGPT and the agent what to search for.
That's what we have to be reallycareful about, South.
Don't be broad with your statements.
Be very analytical with them andgive them absolutely everything
that you can think of, and then they'll do the actual work for
(10:59):
you. I'm going to test it out and
I'll come back with some more information for you on the next
episode, which will be dropping later today.
So please stay tuned for that. I'm going to go over the whole
thing and I'm going to work out the agent workflow as much as
possible and I'll let you know how that all works out.
So thank you so much for listening.
I have one ask of you, actually,I asked this yesterday, but I
(11:23):
never really ask for these kind of things.
I usually do it like once a weekjust because I don't want to
really. I don't really want to get into
it too much, but I've been doingthis show, I think we're at 900
episodes, something like that. Some ridiculous amount of
episodes. I've been doing it for like 4
years and in those four years I haven't really asked for
anything. I've never, you know, maybe
Patreon here and there or you know, follow the channel,
(11:47):
something like that. But I continue to do it every
morning, drop episodes every morning at 4:30 AM EST.
And I just need a favor from you.
If you could hit the follow or the subscribe button, that would
be great. That's one favor I need to ask.
2 favors actually, and that'll only take you a second, but the
(12:07):
channel is in this. This show is in dire need of
some financial backing and I'm going to ask this one more time
this week and this is the final time I'm going to ask this week.
If you have Venmo and you can send anything at all to Will Wil
Dash WALDON help support the show.
(12:32):
It goes directly into all of my costs for the show and it's been
really helpful. A few people have done it and I
want to give them shout outs because I told them I would last
time I did this and I didn't do it yesterday.
So I feel kind of bad about that.
But you know, I had JW again with another $5 donation, have
(13:01):
JS with A10, we have MH with 50,BSI can't say the full names,
but BS with $75. Thank you so much for all of
your donations and all of this helps me continue doing the
show. That's all I'm saying.
I put all my time and effort into this and I spend a lot of a
(13:25):
lot of time that I could be spending with my family I spent
doing the show and like getting ready for the show.
So I do sacrifice a lot for the show, even though it's only
around 10 minutes every day. So if you're new here, thank you
for listening. If you've been here for a while
and you've heard so many episodes, thank you for
listening as well. Thank you for being part of this
(13:46):
great community and thank you toeverybody who's supporting me
and supporting the show on Venmo.
I really do appreciate you and I'm going to find some people
have been D Ming me and asking me to find other ways for them
to help out, but they because they don't have Venmo.
So I'm going to get I'm going toget some other apps, cash app,
etcetera. So it can be very helpful that
(14:08):
way and I'll get it. I'll make a website for you so
you can go visit it and donate or whatever.
So that's it for now, everybody,thank you so much.
Hey, thank you so much for listening today.
I really do appreciate your support.
If you could take a second and hit the subscribe or the follow
button on whatever podcast platform that you're listening
on right now, I greatly appreciate it.
(14:30):
It helps out the show tremendously and you'll never
miss an episode. And each episode is about 10
minutes or less to get you caught up quickly.
And please, if you want to support the show even more, go
to patreon.com/stage Zero. And please take care of
yourselves and each other. And I'll see you tomorrow.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.