OpenAI's latest beta release for ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users, "4o with scheduled tasks", enhances the AI-powered assistant with some capabilities to send users simple reminders about things like deadlines and expiration dates, and to comply with slightly more complex and recurring requests, such as suggesting local events happening during the weekend every Friday, summarizing the news of the day, or checking the price of plane tickets or accommodation reservations each month. The feature also enables ChatGPT to suggest tasks to users based on previous conversations, but any suggestion has to be approved by the user before becoming an active task.

However, "4o with scheduled tasks" cannot perform continuous background searches—it cannot monitor websites to let users know exactly when a video game is launched—and it also cannot purchase things on a user's behalf. Moreover, users are currently limited to running 10 active tasks simultaneously. The feature is accessed through a dropdown menu in ChatGPT's web interface, where users can manage their tasks through chat or a dedicated task manager tab.

While the tasks feature can rightfully be described as a quite basic agentic AI system, it is also an ideal starting point to gather feedback and monitor real world usage as the company reportedly prepares to launch more sophisticated agentic AI systems capable of carrying out more complex workloads, in line with CEO Sam Altman's claims that we will see AI agents "join the workforce" this year. A report by Bloomberg, has already sparked plenty of buzz around a project called Operator, an AI-powered agent capable of handling complex tasks like coding and travel booking.