In the early morning of September 26th, OpenAI dropped a bombshell, launching a new feature called "Pulse" for its flagship product, ChatGPT. This marks ChatGPT's rapid evolution from a passive question-answering tool to a personal assistant that can proactively think and anticipate user needs.
Currently, this new feature is open for preview to Pro users on mobile devices. It aims to push a customized "Daily Briefing" to users in the early morning through "asynchronous research" every night. The content covers personal interests, work schedules, life trivia and other aspects.
The advent of Pulse is not only an important layout of OpenAI in the field of "Agentic AI", but also indicates that the paradigm of human-AI interaction is about to undergo profound changes.
Currently, this new feature is available for preview to Pro users on mobile devices.
1. Core Functionality: From Passive Question-Answering to Proactive Service Provision
Since its inception, our interaction model with ChatGPT has been simple: users simply ask questions and receive answers to help them learn, create, or solve problems. However, this model has always had an inherent limitation: it relies entirely on users knowing what to ask and always places the responsibility of initiating the next step on their shoulders. The launch of Pulse completely changes this situation, giving ChatGPT the ability to proactively start conversations for the first time.
The core Pulse experience is a personalized daily morning briefing. Each morning, users receive a curated set of updates presented on their mobile devices in the form of simple, themed "themed visual cards." These cards feature illustrations and topic summaries for quick scanning, and users can tap to expand a topic for more detailed information.
The OpenAI team emphasized that this design is to "save you time, not waste your time," so that users can quickly return to the most important things after obtaining the information they need. The daily update content is fixed and will disappear after reading. It will disappear after 24 hours unless the user chooses to save it as a chat record or ask a follow-up question.
The power of Pulse lies in the highly customized content it pushes, which is completely generated based on the user's individual situation. This content might be based on the user's recent chat topics, such as follow-up suggestions for a project; it might also be based on the user's schedule to provide dinner recipe suggestions; or it might provide specific action plans for achieving long-term goals (such as training for a triathlon).
For example, a user who frequently discusses space and parenting topics with ChatGPT might see news about NASA rocket launches in the morning, as well as suggestions for Halloween costumes appropriate for their children's age.
To provide even more relevant suggestions, users can also choose to connect to external apps like Gmail and Google Calendar. These integrations are disabled by default and can be turned on or off at any time in settings. Once connected, ChatGPT can proactively take on even greater benefits, such as drafting meeting agendas, reminding users to buy birthday gifts, or recommending restaurants for upcoming trips.
2. The Black Technology Behind It: Asynchronous Learning and User Feedback
The operating mechanism of ChatGPT Pulse can be summarized as an innovative "Asynchronous Research" model.
Simply put, ChatGPT quietly "works overtime" while the user is sleeping. It sorts out your chat history, memory, and information in connected apps in the background, analyzes your interests and needs, and then prepares for the next day's briefing.
Of course, this AI assistant isn't perfect from the start; it needs your guidance. Users have complete control over Pulse. Using the "Curate" button, users can directly tell ChatGPT what they want to see in future briefings, such as requesting "focus on the latest news on professional tennis tomorrow" or requesting tips on learning a new skill.
Additionally, for every card received, users can provide instant feedback with a simple "like" or "dislike," and this feedback history can be viewed or deleted at any time.
ChatGPT Pulse will even proactively ask users to better understand their preferences. For example, when recommending travel options, it will ask whether you prefer "family hotels" or "special experiences" to help shape the next day's push content.
In early testing with university students in its ChatGPT Lab project, OpenAI found that the more active user feedback and guidance, the smarter and more useful Pulse became. "Your Pulse is only for you," emphasized Christina Kaplan, head of personalization at OpenAI. "Your feedback data is only used to optimize your own experience, not to train other people's models."
At the same time, all topics displayed in Pulse have undergone safety checks to avoid showing harmful content that violates OpenAI policies. When asked whether personalized push notifications could push users into "information cocoons," Kaplan responded that the team has "a lot of safety filtering and restrictions" and that the company's policy and security teams are studying this issue.
3. Industry shock: The era of AI assistants has truly arrived
The launch of Pulse is not just a feature update, it represents an important shift in the human-computer interaction paradigm and is regarded by OpenAI as "the beginning of a new paradigm for interacting with AI."
Its core significance is to push AI from a passive to a proactive approach. Fidji Simo, CEO of OpenAI's applications division, put it succinctly: "The real breakthrough will be when an AI assistant understands your goals and proactively helps you achieve them without prompting, just like the best human assistants."
This is the "agentic AI" that industry giants are vying for. Pulse enables ChatGPT to independently decide what to research and present, representing a new direction in the evolution of intelligent agents.
In the fierce market competition, Pulse also consolidates OpenAI's market position. It positions ChatGPT as a preferred information access portal, directly competing with services from companies such as Google, hoping to make ChatGPT "an assistant you never leave" by providing highly personalized and proactive content.
4. Challenges and the Future: The Road to an All-Rounded AI Assistant
Despite its promise, OpenAI acknowledges that Pulse is still a "pre-production" and isn't perfect. It occasionally makes mistakes, and it might sometimes push outdated or irrelevant information, such as suggesting a project that's already been completed. Its success rate varies widely depending on the topic it's working on.
At the same time, Pulse's effectiveness relies heavily on ongoing user feedback and guidance. Without proactive user curation, the quality of its recommendations may not meet expectations. Furthermore, some users are uncertain about the value Pulse provides and even question its necessity, worrying that it will distract users and undermine the AI agent's original purpose of streamlining workflows.
Currently, Pulse is only available to Pro subscribers on mobile, who pay $200 per month. Although OpenAI plans to expand it to $20 per month Plus users after gathering initial feedback and eventually open it to all users, its coverage remains limited in the short term.
But the direction Pulse points to is clear. In the near future, Pulse will be able to connect with more of the apps a user uses to capture more complete context and provide more accurate updates. OpenAI is also exploring how Pulse can provide relevant information at key moments throughout the day, such as a quick resource check before a meeting or providing resources when users need them most.
OpenAI's long-term vision is to build AI systems that can proactively research, plan, and take beneficial actions for users, guided by their guidance. Pulse's current form (personalized research and timely updates) is just the simplest manifestation of this grand vision. Ultimately, ChatGPT will evolve from a consulting object to an AI assistant that can act on its users' behalf and work alongside them as a team.
Just as Simo envisions the future: personal assistant services, once available only to the wealthy, will become accessible to everyone through AI, freeing us from daily chores. A new era has arrived, in which AI no longer waits for instructions but proactively thinks for us.
This article is from Tencent Technology , author: Jinlu, and published by 36Kr with authorization.
