Under Control 👌🦾

👀 TLDR

In this week’s What’s Appening, we cover the launch of ChatGPT Agent, a general purpose agentic tool that will control your browser and carry out tasks like booking restaurants on your behalf. It’s clearly got a few issues to sort out, and we would call it “semi-autonomous,” but it really does seem like a glimpse of a not-so-distant future. We also have news on how a weak password led to the demise of a 158-year-old company, the weird Grok AI companions, a new app backed by Kesha, and much more.

🎬 Our Top Take

📱📵 OpenAI – ChatGPT Agent Tool Arrives with Mixed Results

The era of AI Agents feels like it’s finally here, well, kind of. Following in the footsteps of Google and Anthropic, which have released similar general purpose agentic tools, OpenAI has released ChatGPT Agent, a tool that will take command of your browser and do stuff for you, like book flights and restaurants, schedule meetings, and so on. So far, that’s what we expected – it’s what we have been promised – but what about the execution? First, it’s not truly autonomous – human intervention is required for “actions of consequence,” which means stuff like filling in payment info or hitting “buy tickets” on a flight to Bermuda. That’s undeniably a good thing, at least at this point in AI’s evolution, and it also ties in with OpenAI’s policy of playing it safe right now. Secondly, the agent is throwing up a lot of errors, even when asked to do basic stuff like plan a trip to see MLB stadiums (it recommended a stadium in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico). It can also take a while to finish its task, with one test showing it took an hour to book a restaurant. Should we be disappointed? Not necessarily. It will get better, and it will likely become more autonomous. We don’t see mass adoption of agents just yet, at least outside the developer community, and we don’t think OpenAI does either. But there is enough evidence here to say that mass adoption will come, once they iron out a few wrinkles. #SpecialAgent Read more here.

📲 App of the Week: Smash

It’s not often we highlight a celebrity-backed app in this section, but we were intrigued by the backstory on this one. Kesha, an artist who knows a thing or two about the darker side of the music biz, has launched Smash, an app that wants to solve the very issues she faced in her years in the industry. The app acts as a kind of LinkedIn for musicians and creators, allowing them to hire, collaborate with artists, and create. The key aspect is that it is all done with safe contracting, meaning artists retain the rights to what they have created. It is a “work in progress,” but some big tech beasts have been with Kesha from development through launch. Find out more about Smash here and visit the official website here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 2.5B Prompts

📈📉 ChatGPT – Daily Prompts Shows both Growth and Potential

The latest user statistics for ChatGPT globally indicate that we are sending approximately 2.5 billion prompts per day. Unsurprisingly – at least for now – the number of prompts lags behind the number of Google Search actions (about 18 billion per day), but we have to remember a few things: First, AI bots have not reached the same level of universal adoption as Google Search. Secondly, ChatGPT is one of many bots. It’s fair to say that daily prompts will probably outstrip traditional search queries soon; perhaps by the end of the decade? #PromptStats Read more here.

🗞️ Other Stories

📍 Meanwhile at 3Advance

The work was good. The chicken was better. This week, our Growth Strategist Furqaan joined Ayush and Paul in Arlington, VA, for a mid-Summer get-together. That meant a talking shop, and breaking bread. Paul hosted over at 3A headquarters, where he wasn’t the only one to enjoy Furqaan’s fabulous cooking – tandoori chicken! Turns out the 3A team serves up more than delicious software products. Nice work, Furqaan. 😋

📣 Promos

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