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Paid users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now ask the AI assistant to schedule reminders or recurring requests. A new beta feature called Tasks will begin rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users worldwide this week.
With tasks, users can set simple reminders with ChatGPT, such as “Remind me when my passport expires in six months,” and the AI assistant will track your tasks with a push notification on the platform you enable. Users can now set recurring requests to ChatGPT, such as “Give me a weekend plan based on my walk and weather forecast every Friday” or “Give me a news briefing every day at 7am”.
The new task feature appears to be OpenAI’s first foray into AI models that can act somewhat autonomously, also known as AI agents. So says Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI 2025 will be big for AI agentsthey even claim they will “join the workforce” this year. Tasks is a fairly limited version of the agent system, but it allows users to set reminders with ChatGPT, which is a practical feature most people expect from assistants like Siri and Alexa. Scheduled data requests are more unique and show new capabilities that previous digital assistants could not.
Users can access tasks in ChatGPT by selecting “with 4o scheduled tasks” from the drop-down menu. From there, they can send a message to ChatGPT telling the AI assistant what reminder or action they want to create. Sometimes, OpenAI says, ChatGPT can suggest certain tasks based on conversations. Users can set and manage tasks by chatting with an AI assistant on any platform or through a dedicated task manager icon available only on the web app.
Through the Tasks feature, ChatGPT can already browse the web on a set schedule, but it will not continuously search or shop in the background. For example, you can tell ChatGPT to check for concert tickets to see your favorite artist in your area once a month, but you can’t tell the AI assistant to notify you when tickets are released, nor can ChatGPT buy tickets for you. So, this is a step towards those systems.
OpenAI says it’s using this beta period to learn more about how people use tasks before making the feature widely available in its mobile app and ChatGPT’s free tier. For this beta release, the company says you won’t be able to assign tasks through Advanced Voice mode.
While AI assistants based on large language models push the boundaries of what computers can do, they also struggle with some simple tasks that smartphones can do. OpenAI, Google and other AI model developers have had to find smart solutions to set timers and create reminders for their assistants. Although these tasks are relatively small-scale, OpenAI wants ChatGPT to handle more complex tasks going forward.
OpenAI is preparing to release more advanced agent systems, including an agent called Operator that can write code and book rides. This system may arrive in the next few weeks Bloomberg.
With more advanced agent systems, more potential problems arise. The tasks show a fairly controlled selection of agent abilities, but may be tested in the coming months as OpenAI’s guardians introduce more autonomous AI systems.
