Last month, following reporting from The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI confirmed it was working on a desktop super app that would combine ChatGPT, its Codex coding agent and Atlas web browser into one cohesive experience. OpenAI is not releasing that application today. Instead, it's pushing out a major update to Codex that significantly expands what that software can do. However, the new release offers a glimpse of what OpenAI hopes to build with its latest effort.  

"We're building the super app out in the open," said Thibault Sottiaux, the head of Codex, during a press briefing held by OpenAI. "This release is about developers. In the future, we will broaden it up to a wider audience." Until then, the latest version of Codex offers developers multi-purpose AI agents that can work across a "larger surface area," while being more proactive. In practice, that translates to a host of new capabilities, starting with computer use. 

The agents inside of Codex can interact with other apps on your PC. When prompting one of OpenAI's models, you can name a specific program or let it determine the best application for the job. Computer use is available in competing apps like Claude Cowork, but where OpenAI believes Codex offers an edge in that department is in the "secret sauce" it built to allow an agent to run an app without bogging down your entire system, so the two of you can work in tandem. At the same time, OpenAI is releasing 111 new plugins for Codex that combine skills, app integrations and model context protocol server connections to give Codex more ways to gather context and use the tools developers depend on for their work.

The company has also added a built-in browser, with a commenting system that allows you to prompt Codex to make tweaks to specific parts of a webpage or web app you're building. In the demo OpenAI showed, one member of the Codex team used this tool to instruct Codex to change the margins on a graph so that the y axis wasn't cut off. Complementing this is built-in image generation. Codex can use gpt-image-1.5 to create product concepts, mockups, frontend designs and even assets for simple games. It also allows Codex to use screenshots to verify it's on the right track with a user request.   

With today's update, OpenAI is also previewing a pair of memory features. The first allows Codex to recall context from previous tasks to inform how it goes about future prompts. According to OpenAI, with time, this will allow Codex to complete requests faster and to a higher standard. The app will also use the context it's gathered to suggest proactive actions. For example, at the start of your day, it might suggest you respond to a comment a coworker left on a Google Doc draft you wrote. 

If you want to try the updated Codex for yourself, OpenAI is starting to roll out the new version to desktop app users who are logged in with their ChatGPT account. Computer use is available to macOS users first, with availability for people in the EU and UK to follow soon. Similarly, Brits and Europeans will need to wait to try the memory features OpenAI has built into Codex.  

Adobe isn't the only company releasing a new AI assistant this week. Ahead of its Create event in Los Angeles today, Canva announced Canva AI 2.0. Building on its existing AI assistant, the company is billing the release as its most significant update since the platform first launched in 2013, and the culmination of years of investment to build its own foundational design models. 

As you might imagine, it all starts with a conversational interface that allows you to describe an idea or goal and the system will start generating a design to match. Under the hood, there's a new orchestration layer that allows the model to use all of Canva's disparate tools to accomplish complex, multi-step tasks. For instance, the company suggests you could use Canva AI to create a multi-channel advertising campaign, and the software will generate everything you need to get that off the ground. 

Canva

If edits are required, the company says Canva AI avoids one of the pitfalls of many other image generation models. It's possible to edit every visual element the system generates, just like if they were created with a traditional image editor. As a result, you can do things like swap out images and tweak fonts without affecting any other part of a design. To bring everything together, Canva has built persistent memory into the tool. The more you use Canva AI, the better the system will get at applying your personal taste and style to future generations. According to the company, it also has a context window that is long enough to maintain coherence until you arrive at a final design.    

Alongside those enhancements, Canva is adding support for new workflows that expand what you can do with its software, starting with connections that allow its models to pull data from other apps, including Notion, Slack, Zoom, Gmail, Google Calendar and more. Users can also schedule tasks for Canva AI to complete in the background, and the company has even baked in deep research capabilities into the tool.

The coding function Canva previously offered has been upgraded to include support for HTML imports, allowing users to bring any HTML file or AI-generated experience into Canva's visual editor to tweak the design of it without breaking things. For brands, the company is also offering a tool that can process their visual identity and apply it to new and existing designs.   

Canva

As a casual observer, it might seem like Canva is trend chasing, but Danny Wu, the company's head of AI, argues the new AI tools represent a natural evolution for Canva. "This is something we've been dreaming of and working towards for quite a while," he tells Engadget. "Even before ChatGPT was a thing, we were thinking, 'what if we don't have a template that matches your needs?' … So I wouldn't describe this as a pivot or shift, we've been wanting to offer these kinds of capabilities all along as part of our mission to make design simple."

If you want to give Canva's new tools a try for yourself, Canva AI 2.0 is available as a research preview starting today. The first 1 million people who visit the Canva website will get first access, with availability gradually expanding to more users over the coming weeks. As before, access to Canva’s AI features remains included in the company’s free offering, though it’s also introducing a new AI Pass add-on that significantly increases rate limits for users.