OpenAI drastically updates Codex desktop app to use all other apps on your computer, generate images, preview webpages

Confirming it has reached 3 million weekly developers, OpenAI is massively updating its Codex developer environment via its Mac and Windows desktop apps today to bring it closer to the “Super App” the company has confirmed it is pursuing.

Before today, Codex was primarily an environment for using OpenAI’s underlying language models to write, edit, debug and ship software as directed by the user.

Now, Codex will be able to access all of the other apps on your computer, surface relevant information from within them to you when asked or proactively, take actions as directed in said applications, and, in the case of Mac users, even do so while you continue manually using your computer simultaneously to your agents working in the background.

Andrew Ambrosino, an OpenAI technical staffer on the Codex team, described the change plainly in an embargoed press briefing I attended virtually yesterday: “Codex can actually ...