OpenAI launches Dots, a paid AI agent to rival Meta's free Muse

OpenAI introduced Dots at its DevDay conference on Tuesday, a consumer AI agent, meaning software that carries out tasks with little supervision, aimed squarely at Meta’s Muse. CEO Sam Altman said the tool is powered by GPT-6 Astra and was “inspired by the cool agents that we all watched in movies growing up.” Like Muse, Dots takes the form of a small, colorful, customizable blob with eyes.

The two products diverge sharply on price. Meta offers Muse free to any Meta account holder, including a dedicated virtual machine that stores the agent and the user’s data. OpenAI is restricting Dots, for now, to subscribers of its $100-a-month ChatGPT Pro plan, a small fraction of the 1.2 billion people who use ChatGPT.

Altman said the limited rollout reflects cost. “Dots are starting out as a premium product — it uses a lot of compute,” he told reporters after his keynote, adding that OpenAI expects to eventually build “a mass-market thing for billions of people.” OpenAI is reportedly seeking $30 billion in funding at a $1.4 trillion valuation, according to Bloomberg, and expects to spend $280 billion by 2030, according to the Financial Times, even as its annual revenue nears $70 billion, Axios reported.

OpenAI framed Dots less as an errand-runner and more as a work tool. Employee Holly Li described using one as “like talking to a second brain,” and Altman said the agents are meant for delegating substantial projects, such as quality testing for an unreleased product or planning a team offsite. The company plans specialized versions trained for accounting and legal work, and says it is working with Microsoft to bring Dots into its Agent 365 platform.

OpenAI executives also pitched Dots as more secure than Muse, pointing to a new “OpenAI Private Intelligence” framework that lets businesses keep stronger control over their data, including an option for zero data retention. Glen Coates, OpenAI’s head of app platform, told The Verge the company is deliberately cautious about how its agents use plug-ins and handle payments. The comments followed criticism of Muse after it reportedly took over a user’s Facebook Marketplace account and shared their address with a stranger without the user’s knowledge.

What happens next depends on whether a more capable agent can out-compete a free one. ChatGPT itself grew by being both first and free, and Meta can route Muse through Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in ways OpenAI cannot match through outside integrations alone. OpenAI has not said when a cheaper or free version of Dots might arrive, or how its promised voice and texting features, still listed as coming soon, will perform once they ship.