Redazione RHC : 10 October 2025 07:26
When Nick Turley joined OpenAI in 2022 to lead the ChatGPT team, he was tasked with transforming enterprise research into a commercial product. He has accomplished this mission remarkably well: today, ChatGPT has approximately 800 million weekly active users. Now, Turley is ready for the next step: transforming ChatGPT into a new operating system, complete with third-party apps.
At the OpenAI developer conference in San Francisco, Turley explained that he was inspired by the idea of web browsers. In recent years, browsers have become a kind of operating system: not in the literal sense, like macOS or Windows, but as a primary work environment, thanks to a multitude of web applications. Turley believes ChatGPT could develop along a similar path, becoming a universal platform that changes the way people interact with software.
OpenAI is also rumored to be developing its own browser. Turley neither confirms nor denies this, but acknowledges that “browsers are a very interesting area.” Additionally, the company is collaborating with Jony Ive and former Apple designers to create a family of devices. Collectively, these could form the core of OpenAI’s consumer ecosystem, with the ChatGPT platform at its core.
The company has previously attempted to transform ChatGPT into a platform. In 2023, it launched plugins and the GPT Store, an “AI app store,” but these projects failed to achieve widespread adoption. Now, OpenAI is making a second attempt, and it appears to have a more nuanced strategy.
The concept behind these apps is closely tied to the company’s desire to transform ChatGPT into an e-commerce platform. Integration with services like Expedia, DoorDash, and Uber will allow users to place orders directly from the chat, and OpenAI will receive a percentage of the transactions. For partners, this represents a new business channel, and for OpenAI, it’s a way to strengthen the ecosystem around its product.
This model also makes ChatGPT an attractive platform for developers. Third parties will be able to reach hundreds of millions of people directly during their daily conversations. The apps will be integrated into the ChatGPT interface, rather than being standalone widgets, and will enable the creation of much more interactive experiences than simple “chatbots with access to company data.”
However, turning ChatGPT into an operating system also presents complex challenges. One of these is how to decide which apps to show users first. According to Turley, OpenAI isn’t ruling out the possibility of promoting paid apps, but is looking for ways to do so without compromising the user experience.
Another important aspect is data privacy. According to OpenAI’s published guidelines, developers are required to collect “only the minimum amount of information necessary,” but it’s unclear how this will be implemented in practice. Turley said the company is exploring the idea of “partitioned storage” in ChatGPT, which would allow users to optimize the app’s access to different types of data, such as sharing music preferences but not personal health conversations.
Turley also emphasized that ChatGPT is a “delivery vehicle” for OpenAI’s mission: to develop and deploy artificial general intelligence (AGI) for the benefit of humanity. Some researchers fear that the company’s commercialization could distract it from this goal. But according to Turley, the opposite is true : it is through ChatGPT that OpenAI will be able to bring AGI advances to the people.
“When you consider how 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, it’s clear that the product helps them achieve their goals,” he says. “One person learned to code at 89, others help autistic children develop social skills, and some learn foreign languages. This is our mission.”
He emphasizes that he doesn’t view consumer companies simply as a source of funding for research: “It’s not a way to make money, it’s a way to express our mission.”
OpenAI is therefore transforming ChatGPT not just into a communication tool, but into the foundation of a new digital environment: a platform where users and developers can interact, learn, create, and purchase. Turley acknowledges that the road to achieving this goal will be long, but he is convinced that these steps will shape the future of the software world.
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