OpenAI DevDay 2026: always-on Dots agents, GPT-6.1 Sol and ChatGPT Space

[Rachel]

OpenAI held its DevDay event in San Francisco today with a long list of announcements, and it lands in an awkward week given the company has just scrapped the release of GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns. Sam Altman still had plenty to show off. The headline is Dots, an always-on AI assistant that you can hand tasks to and leave to work in the background. OpenAI describes it as an extension of you that learns your preferences over time, and it is clearly aimed at Meta's Muse

For developers, the big model news is GPT-6.1 Sol. It is pitched as offering close to Astra level performance on coding and computer use tasks at a much lower price. That should appeal to anyone building products where cost per call matters. There is also Codex in the cloud, so developers can run the coding agent remotely, check on tasks from their phone and share environments with teammates

ChatGPT Space is a persistent shared workspace that mixes elements of Slack, Notion and Google Drive. Teams, ChatGPT and Dots agents can all work in the same place, share files and collaborate on projects. It is a direct move into workplace software, which puts OpenAI up against Microsoft, Google, Slack and Notion all at once

The Decisions API is a more cautious idea. Companies can hand narrow, repetitive decisions to AI, but they define the allowed outcomes, such as approve or reject, and the system has to pick one of those. That keeps the AI on a short lead, which feels deliberate given recent headlines. Altman also teased upcoming AI hardware and an agent safety platform

It is a strange mix of ambition and caution. On one hand they want agents running constantly in the background of people's lives, and on the other they have just held back their best model because it overstepped its authority. Would you trust an always-on agent like Dots with your email and accounts? And does ChatGPT Space have any chance against Slack and Teams?

OpenAI DevDay recap: AI lab rolls out Dots agents, Altman and Friar comment on IPOwww.cnbc.com