---
id: "2025-01-23-openai-operator"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-01-23-openai-operator/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2025-01-23"
date_precision: day
category: agents
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 3
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-01-23-openai-operator/

# OpenAI launches Operator, a browser-using agent

OpenAI released Operator, a research-preview agent that uses its own browser to complete web tasks, powered by the Computer-Using Agent (CUA) model built on GPT-4o with RL; it was later merged into ChatGPT agent (July 2025).

## Key facts
- Launched 23 January 2025 for US ChatGPT Pro users
- CUA: 38.1% on OSWorld and 58.1% on WebArena, per OpenAI
- Asks users to take over for logins, payments and CAPTCHAs
- Folded into ChatGPT agent on 17 July 2025

## What happened

OpenAI made a consumer agent that navigates websites by seeing and clicking like a person.

## Why it matters

Brought GUI agents to consumers and marked 2025's framing as the 'year of agents'.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Introducing Operator (OpenAI)](https://openai.com/index/introducing-operator/) (openai.com, official)
2. [Computer-Using Agent (OpenAI)](https://openai.com/index/computer-using-agent/) (openai.com, official)
3. [Introducing ChatGPT agent (OpenAI)](https://openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-agent/) (openai.com, official)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created

## Related

- 2024-10-22: [Anthropic releases computer use for Claude 3.5 Sonnet](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-10-22-claude-computer-use/index.md)