OpenAI's Dots: enterprise software that also orders burritos

OpenAI rolled out Dots this week, an agent platform that ships with round avatars, customizable names, and a split-screen interface — chat on the left, a live view of the agent driving a virtual machine on the right. The layout echoes Meta's Muse, but the vibe is different. Muse feels like an accessible shopping assistant. Dots feels like enterprise software that happens to know how to order lunch. Access is limited to the priciest accounts, including the $100-a-month Pro tier, while Muse and the much-discussed rival Instinct remain free, for now.

The agent runs on a cloud workstation that comes with Blender and GIMP pre-installed. You can also extend its reach to your local machine through the ChatGPT desktop app, and even talk to it — "call Dot" — to work by voice. OpenAI claims the agent "can do almost anything" thanks to that cloud computer and app access, but the staged rollout and the price tag make the target market clear: not the broad consumer market.

First test: coordinating a new internet installation. The agent nearly pulled it off. It surfaced a $100 discount buried in emails the author had deleted en masse, then hit a wall on a "human verification" step that required holding a mouse button down — an action the browser control doesn't support. Dot asked the user to open the virtual browser, hold the button manually, and report back when done. Later it reached the payment screen, but there's no Stripe integration like Muse has for storing a card and spinning up a virtual one. The provider wanted bank-account details for a $5 monthly discount, and the author declined to enter them in the virtual environment.

Missed opportunity versus the competition: a free coworking tour. Asked to find a free trial and tour at a coworking space, Dots offered a $35 day pass. Instinct, tested in parallel, located the trial option and booked a meeting in minutes. When the author asked Dot by phone why it missed the free tier, the agent replied, "I jumped to a wrong conclusion." The author hung up.

Third attempt: an IKEA account. The task was to retrieve information about a hanging planter from the author's IKEA account, but the text breaks off there. The picture is already clear, though. Dots demonstrates genuine web-navigation chops, email data extraction, and control of professional applications, yet trips on obstacles rival agents have already solved — CAPTCHAs, secure payments, precision in hunting down free options. For organizations willing to pay for an agent that can run Blender while browsing, that may be enough. For a regular user who just wants a burrito without wrestling CAPTCHAs, not so much.