OpenAI announced over 20 new things, but this is the ChatGPT feature I’ve been waiting for

There's a recurring trend I've noticed following almost every major tech event. A company announces a dozen new products and features, but somehow, everyone ends up fixating on just one. Before you know it, that one announcement is dominating headlines, social media, and basically every conversation surrounding the event.

Admittedly, we in the tech press are guilty of this, too. To some extent, it's intentional. When a company announces several things at once, there's almost always one that makes for a particularly interesting headline, generates the most excitement, or gets people talking. Take Apple's iPhone 18 Pro launch, for example! The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max introduced some cool upgrades, yet one of the biggest talking points surrounding it happened to be the new burgundy color.

Something similar happened at OpenAI's recent DevDay. Despite announcing more than 20 new products and features, much of the attention went to Dots. However, while everyone was busy talking about OpenAI's new AI assistant, another announcement caught my attention: ChatGPT Space.

ChatGPT Space wants to be where all your work happens

ChatGPT is coming for your productivity stack

At XDA, we love AI tools that just... fit into your workflow without needing to force their way in. We're no fans of AI tools doing the exact opposite, either, especially when companies try to shoehorn AI into products and features that worked perfectly fine without it.

That's precisely why ChatGPT Space caught my attention. Instead of introducing yet another standalone AI tool, OpenAI seems to be directing its efforts toward consolidating different parts of your workflow into one place.

Think about your current workflow. You probably use an LLM like ChatGPT or Claude to brainstorm ideas, conduct research, or get help with a project. But once you've got something useful out of that conversation, what happens next? Chances are, you move it into Google Docs to continue writing, Notion to organize your thoughts, or another productivity tool to actually put that information to use. Before you know it, you're juggling several different apps just to get one thing done.

ChatGPT Space basically wants to eliminate some of that back-and-forth. It's OpenAI's attempt at creating an all-in-one workspace where you can research, organize information, create documents, and collaborate with others without constantly switching between different tools.

Think ChatGPT Projects, but taken a step further

A little bit of Projects, a little bit of Notion, and a lot more

At the heart of Space are Pages, which are essentially editable documents that you can create and work on directly within ChatGPT. You can turn an existing conversation into a Page, edit individual sections, add charts and other visual elements, and organize your work into folders and subpages. You can also share Pages with other people and collaborate on them in real time, with each person able to use their own ChatGPT to help with the work.

What I find particularly interesting is that you don't necessarily have to organize everything manually, either. You can simply tell ChatGPT to create a new Space for a project, organize related documents, create subpages, or move things around. There's also a dedicated search feature, along with Recent and Suggested views, to help you find information and pick up where you left off. For someone who constantly finds themselves digging through old AI conversations to find that one useful response, I can definitely see the appeal.

In some ways, it reminds me of Claude/ChatGPT Projects and Google's NotebookLM, both of which already let you organize information around specific topics and use AI to work with it. But while Projects primarily revolves around organizing conversations and their context, and NotebookLM focuses on helping you make sense of your sources, Space takes things a step further by making the actual documents and resulting work the center of the experience.

Dots stole the show at OpenAI's DevDay

But the concept wasn't exactly new

AI labs (and tech companies as a whole) have a habit of launching their own versions of products and features that already exist, often with a slightly different name and a few extra bells and whistles. OpenAI's Dots is a great example of this.

If you haven't heard all the chatter around it yet, OpenAI describes Dots as always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra. Unlike a traditional chatbot that waits for you to send a prompt, Dots can work independently on your behalf, even when you're not actively using ChatGPT.

The idea is that instead of constantly telling ChatGPT what to do next, you can delegate entire responsibilities to a Dot and let it handle the work in the background. It can also connect to external services through plugins, remember your preferences, and provide updates as it makes progress.

The description above might make you think of, well, AI agents in general. While OpenAI doesn't hide the fact that Dots are essentially AI agents with cuter names (and an adorable visual touch to them), the concept itself is hardly new.

We've already seen similar approaches with tools like OpenClaw, which is designed to act as a personal AI assistant that can connect to your apps, automate everyday tasks, and even communicate with you through messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.

The advantage you get with Dots is that they're tightly integrated into the ChatGPT interface. They also run on their own cloud computers, meaning you don't need to keep your own device running for them to continue working. There's also the convenience of having access to OpenAI's ecosystem of plugins, which lets Dots interact with a wide range of third-party apps and services.

However, none of this is particularly groundbreaking. Meta launched Muse, its own personal AI agent, just a few weeks before OpenAI announced Dots. Much like Dots, Muse can work independently, interact with third-party apps, learn your preferences, and even run on its own dedicated computer in the cloud.

Then there's Perplexity Computer, which takes a similar approach by letting you delegate entire workflows to AI. It can break complex tasks into smaller ones, deploy specialized agents to handle them, and continue working in the background. Anthropic's Claude Cowork also deserves a mention here, since it similarly allows users to hand off tasks to Claude and have it interact with their files, apps, and browser.

Of course, all of these tools have their own strengths, limitations, and approaches to autonomous work. I'm in no way suggesting Dots is simply a carbon copy of any of them — because it isn't. However, when the underlying concept has already been explored by several major AI companies, it's hard for me to see Dots as the groundbreaking announcement it's being made out to be.

I just wish they weren't locked behind expensive subscriptions

Unfortunately, both Space and Dots are locked behind ChatGPT Pro, which starts at $100 per month. I'm currently on the $20 Plus tier (which gets me a lot more usage than Claude's $100 Max tier), and I've found it more than sufficient for my everyday needs.

I'm hoping OpenAI eventually brings Space to more affordable subscription tiers, because it feels like the kind of feature that could genuinely benefit a much wider audience. Until then, I'll have to admire it from the sidelines (or convince myself that a ChatGPT Pro subscription is a perfectly reasonable business expense).