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How OpenAI turned its coding tools into dots, an always-on personal assistant

Published

1 day ago

October 27, 2026

The always-on AI personal assistant, which keeps working in the background even when you aren’t asking it to, is this year’s answer to the question of how people will actually use deep learning models. The startup Instinct became an overnight sensation, and Meta put the full force of its marketing behind its assistant, Muse.

OpenAI wasn’t going to be left out. The company released dots, its assistant offering, at its developer day in late September. Alexander Embiricos, who leads OpenAI’s enterprise product team, joined us at TechCrunch Disrupt this month to explain where the product came from—starting with the question of why so many companies seem to be turning to cutesy mascots as avatars for their trillion-parameter matrix multiplication machines.

“There’s kind of this convergent evolution happening,” Embiricos said of the efforts to build AI assistants. “As we were working on the product, we realized if we could frame this as, it’s an entity and it’s a single conversation, not many different conversations….it starts to become intuitive.”

The assistant is available in the ChatGPT desktop and mobile apps to subscribers on the Pro tier or higher, with plans starting at $100 a month. Once it is connected to your calendar, email, computer and other tools, the agent tries to help you get your work done.

Embiricos points out that you could achieve much of dots’ functionality with Open AI’s Codex app, its coding tool, released at the beginning of this year. But that requires more work and hand-holding. He recalled celebrating when his wife started leaving her computer on all night so that her agents could keep working.

“On the product team, what I think about is, how do we make this intuitive and useful to people?” he told Disrupt attendees. “A lot of that isn’t building some new piece of tech into the product; it’s how you frame it to the user and how it feels.”

Making the technology feel intuitive meant repackaging the functionality of the company’s models into something more accessible, a path it was already on as it spun ChatGPT Work out of the agentic coding tools it had built for software engineers. Even the name—a play on the negative space inside of OpenAI’s logo—is intended “to feel like just something that could eventually be ubiquitous.” (Asked when he learned that rival AI entrepreneur Elon Musk owns the dot.com URL, Embiricos said, “I found out very late.”)

The idea of a persistent agent is that it doesn’t need prompting. For OpenAI, means more token usage, and for users, a more pro-active assistant “that’s sort of thinking about you and thinking how to help you,” as Embiricos put it.

In our testing, the assistant’s ability to think ahead is apparent and often useful, but it isn’t quite there yet. It will flag calendar conflicts and upcoming deadlines, but not necessarily in the most timely fashion.

“The first time it told me about one of those [conflicts]—this is like early in development—it told me three minutes before the thing,” Embiricos says of his dot. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this thing is coming up. You might want to do something about it.’ I only have three minutes!”

Embiricos expects the timing to improve over time, but the proactive approach is key to the product. “I was hearing about an engineer at a drone delivery startup, and they were saying, ‘We had this outage, and by the time I noticed that the outage was going on, my dot had already noticed the outage was happening, had already analyzed the outage, and had come to me with useful information for how we could resolve the outage.’”

Giving dot the keys

As with most AI agent use cases, there’s a tension between the personal information an AI model needs to be useful and exactly how much personal data you are exposing to a software company. Muse has been criticized for the profiles it builds of your family and friends, which the software uses to know, say, what kind of restaurant you might want to go to with a specific pal, but could also add incredible value to Meta’s advertising business. Does dots collect similar data?

“Yes, we have a thing that we built into dots, which we call proactive research,” Embiricos said. “On a cadence, it will think about what it knows about you, what is the conversation that it’s had, and then what have you given it access to that it can think about, and then it will go and research, ‘What could I do to be more helpful to you?’ And then, basically, it will propose that.”

It’s difficult to separate the data needs of the agent from that of its parent corporation. Hark, a start-up developing its own AI personal assistant, is explicit in pointing out it that it doesn’t collect data to fuel an advertising business the way that OpenAI and Meta do.

With dots, OpenAI says that the agent has the same privacy controls as ChatGPT itself: Users can turn off model training (stopping OpenAI from using their conversations to improve its AI), and control what resources it accesses within your computer and how. Still, those controls aren’t granular and the app can be pushy. For example, it refuses to accept read-only access to cloud drives.

“What I think we need to do is basically build out super, super, super granular controls,” Embiricos said, but he pointed to the model’s intelligence and discretion as the other side of this coin.

“This is actually something we kind of got some flack about when we launched,” Embiricos said. “We had really conservative defaults over what the agent would do, and it would ask for permission a lot. I remember knowing that we were going to see that feedback, but thinking, ‘This is okay, we can tune that over time.’”

Can personal AI agents scale?

The other big question about AI agents is whether they can scale. They’re fun when only a few people have them, and stories of agents snagging hard-to-get reservations abound. But businesses don’t necessarily like dealing with agents and might not be equipped to. People certainly don’t like dealing with them (note: stop having your AI agents pitch me), and Embiricos is among those people. He also has a human assistant because OpenAI’s corporate partners want to interact with a person, he said, adding, “I personally never intend to have a meeting with someone else’s agent.”

If the AI industry is right that agents are our future, can we get there without overwhelming the infrastructure that our world currently runs on, from businesses and websites to payment networks?

“At OpenAI…we’re not always moving the fastest in terms of shipping the next ability for the agent to work with the world,” he said. “When we do, we’re doing it really closely in collaboration with the rest of the ecosystem. I probably can’t say too much here, but we’re deep in lots of conversations with payment processors.”

Letting an AI assistant spend money through partnerships with payment companies would be a potentially lucrative first for OpenAI, but also a big ask for consumers. Giving an assistant access to my email inbox already feels like a big ask, but my bank account is off limits. For now.

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Related Topics:alwayson assistant coding dots OpenAI personal tools turned

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Dakar 2026: “Today’s Young Athletes Are Tomorrow’s Olympic Champions” — SSA Adeboye Charges Team Nigeria

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2 hours ago

October 28, 2026

PlateauReports

The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Grassroots Sports Development, Hon. Adeyinka Anthony Adeboye, has charged Nigeria’s contingent to the forthcoming Youth Olympic Games in Dakar, Senegal, to represent the country with pride, discipline and patriotism, describing the competition as a major opportunity to nurture the next generation of Nigerian sporting champions.

Adeboye gave the charge at the send-forth ceremony organised by the National Sports Commission (NSC) in Abuja on Tuesday, where the young athletes were formally presented in their green-and-white national kits ahead of their scheduled departure for Senegal on Thursday.

Send forth ceremony for youth Olympic games ( Dakar 2026).

The Presidential aide, who attended the ceremony, commended the efforts to identify and prepare emerging talents for international competition, stressing that Nigeria’s long-term sporting success depends on sustained investment in grassroots development and opportunities for young athletes to demonstrate their abilities.

“Today’s young athletes are tomorrow’s Olympic champions. What matters is giving them the right opportunities, guidance and support to develop their potential. These young Nigerians carry the hopes of their families, communities and country,” Adeboye said.

He noted that competing at the Youth Olympic Games would expose the athletes to international standards, strengthen their confidence and provide valuable experience as they work towards future senior competitions, including the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Adeboye also emphasised the importance of programmes that identify promising athletes early and provide them with structured pathways to elite competition.

He highlighted the potential of the National Sports Commission’s Invited Junior Athletes (IJA) programme to help uncover young talents who might otherwise remain undiscovered, particularly those emerging from grassroots communities.

According to him, Nigeria must build a sporting system that consistently discovers, develops and supports talent rather than relying solely on individual breakthroughs.

“Grassroots sports development is where the journey begins. We must identify talents early, nurture them properly and give them access to quality coaching and competitions. Our ambition should be to create a system that produces champions consistently,” he added.

The ceremony also marked the formal handover of the Nigerian contingent by the NSC to the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) ahead of the team’s departure.

NOC President Engr. Habu Gumel received the athletes and assured the Commission that they would be supported during the Games, while emphasising the importance of clean competition.

The Youth Olympic Games will take place from October 31 to November 13, 2026, in Dakar, making Senegal the host of the first Olympic event to be staged on African soil.

Adeboye expressed confidence that the experience would inspire the athletes to pursue greater achievements and reinforce the importance of investing in young Nigerians as the foundation of the country’s sporting future.

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‘I have a duty to serve Nigeria, and I will’ — Adesina tells Tinubu

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3 hours ago

October 28, 2026

PlateauReports

Former President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, has declared his readiness to serve Nigeria in any capacity, saying he has a duty and responsibility to contribute to the country’s development.

Mr Adesina made the declaration on Tuesday after meeting President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, where he briefed the president on his 10-year tenure at the continental development finance institution.

“I’m fully able to help Nigeria in any capacity. I’ve always had that. You know, my heart is always at home,” he told journalists after the meeting.

Asked what role he could play, Mr Adesina said he would help in any capacity the president considered appropriate, but stressed he was not seeking a government appointment.

“I’m not looking for a job. I’m not looking for anything. I’m just here to help. It’s my country. I have a duty, an obligation, and a responsibility to do so, and I will,” he said.

There was no announcement of a specific role or appointment for the former AfDB president following the meeting.

Adesina’s record in agriculture and development finance

Mr Adesina, an agricultural economist, served as Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development from 2011 to 2015 under former President Goodluck Jonathan before becoming the first Nigerian to lead the AfDB.

He was elected president of the bank in May 2015 and re-elected for a second five-year term in August 2020. His tenure ended in 2025.

As agriculture minister, he championed reforms to the distribution of subsidised farm inputs, including an electronic-wallet system that let farmers receive support for seeds and fertiliser via mobile phones.

The AfDB said the programme reached 15 million farmers within its first four years. The initiative was intended to improve access to agricultural inputs while reducing the role of intermediaries in their distribution.

At the AfDB, Mr Adesina oversaw the institution’s development agenda, which included expanding electricity access, improving food security, industrialising African economies, promoting regional integration and improving living standards.

During his leadership, the bank’s general capital increased from $93 billion to $208 billion in 2019, following a decision by its shareholders, the largest capital increase in the institution’s history at the time.

AfDB provided $7 billion to Nigeria in 10 years

At the meeting, Mr Adesina said the AfDB provided about $7 billion in financing to Nigeria between 2015 and 2025.

He compared this with the $11.1 billion in cumulative financing the bank had provided to Nigeria since it began operations in the country in 1971.

“Within 10 years, we were able to do 63 per cent, literally, of that,” he said, adding that President Tinubu was pleased with the bank’s support to Nigeria during his tenure.

Mr Adesina said he used the meeting to commend the president for his economic reforms, particularly the removal of the petrol subsidy and the harmonisation of the foreign exchange windows.

He described the measures as difficult but said they were beginning to produce results.

He cited increased foreign exchange availability, the return of portfolio investors and a downward trend in inflation as signs of progress. However, he acknowledged that prices remained high for Nigerians.

He also pointed to improved assessments of Nigeria by some international rating agencies, saying the country’s outlook had shifted towards stable or positive assessments.

The comments come amid ongoing debate over the impact of the Tinubu administration’s economic reforms, including higher fuel costs after the removal of the petrol subsidy and changes to the foreign exchange market.

Although the government has defended the measures as necessary to stabilise the economy, the higher cost of living has continued to put pressure on households and businesses.

From economic stabilisation to growth

Mr Adesina said stabilising the economy was only the beginning, arguing that Nigeria must now focus on structural transformation, economic growth and prosperity.

He said President Tinubu recognised the need to move beyond macroeconomic reforms and address the broader challenge of transforming the economy.

“I told the president, I’m back at home, here to help and ready to help. It’s my country. I love my country, and I’m ready to help,” he said.

His offer comes after a decade leading one of Africa’s major development finance institutions, a period during which the bank financed projects and programmes across sectors including agriculture, energy, transport and infrastructure.

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Mr Adesina’s meeting with the president also gave him an opportunity to formally brief the president on the completion of his two terms and the achievements recorded during his leadership of the bank.

He said he was honoured to have been received by the president and was pleased with the report he presented.

While Mr Adesina did not specify how he might contribute to Nigeria’s development, he said he was prepared to do so whenever the president believed his experience could be useful.

“It’s my country. I have a duty, an obligation, and a responsibility to do so, and I will,” he said.