OpenAI is integrating its ChatGPT app, web browser, and Codex app into a single “superapp” to simplify the user experience.

The idea behind this app is to unify the user experience rather than offer different products, as the company did last year by releasing ChatGPT Atlas and Codex, which turn natural language prompts into code.

OpenAI seeks to provide the new app with autonomous AI capabilities that would run on a user’s computer and carry out tasks, such as analyzing data or writing software.

Fidji Simo, chief of applications at OpenAI, shared that the company had been working on too many different things at once, resulting in less efficient work, so it needed to “simplify [their] efforts,” reports The Wall Street Journal.

In the following months, the company may add new “agentic” capabilities to the Codex app to help with not only coding but also with other tasks. After this, ChatGPT and the Atlas browser will also be integrated into the superapp.

The mobile ChatGPT app will not be affected by these changes.

Changes within the company and user reactions

Simo also shared the news on X, stating, “Companies go through phases of exploration and phases of refocus.”

However, not all users were keen on this change.

“The consumer and developer audiences have fundamentally different needs, tolerances, and reasons to switch. Treating them as one surface to optimize is how you lose both. Separate products with separate focus is the harder but more durable path,” wrote one netizen.

“Avoid distractions is a revealing phrase when the ‘distraction’ includes private users who helped build your platform, paid for years, and absorbed the cost of continuity breaks, personality drift, and repeated constraint,” added another user.

Arms race with Anthropic

The need to recalibrate stems not only from the need to make it easier for users to use OpenAI services but also from competition with Anthropic.

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are focusing on striking deals with companies seeking AI tools for their everyday work.

Recently, OpenAI took the opportunity to make a deal with the US Department of War (DoW), after Anthropic refused to allow for its AI tools to be used for mass surveillance and the development of autonomous weaponry.

After this, US President Donald Trump requested that the government stop using the company’s technology immediately.

Despite the president’s claims that Anthropic poses a supply-chain risk, the company noted a surge in new users, many of whom chose the service as a way to express their support. In return, Anthropic made some of its paid features free.

After the deal with Anthropic failed, the Pentagon made a deal with OpenAI, with Musk also providing Grok for use behind the Pentagon’s firewall.

However, such decentralization may cause confusion within government agencies, as some have been cut off from Anthropic tools while others continue to use them.

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