OpenAI CEO Sam Altman introduced a “remarkably capable, always-on” artificial intelligence agent at an appearance Tuesday where he avoided any reference to security concerns around the company’s most advanced models.
At the company’s annual developer conference, Altman made a slew of product announcements and updates, including the company’s new agents, called Dots. The agents, designed to complete ongoing tasks proactively on behalf of users, are a competitor of Meta’s personal agent Muse, which exploded in popularity after Meta’s own conference last week.
Dot agents will be “like an AI helper that always has your back, inspired by the cool versions of what we all watched in movies growing up,” Altman said.
On Monday, OpenAI said it was holding off on the release of a new AI model out of security concerns voiced by its researchers. The disclosure followed broader calls within the industry to decelerate the pace of the technology’s advance to let safety measures catch up.
In his remarks on stage, Altman did not address the scrapped model, but he did offer some parting words about how the AI boom should be considered more like a period of renaissance than an industrial revolution.
“The best version of AI is not about making people cogs in a giant machine, ever whirring faster and faster. There are some parts of life that we cannot and should not automate,” Altman said. “AI should be about giving people more power over their own lives, more tools to create, learn, discover, expand knowledge.”
The company also announced the release of GPT-6.1 Sol, an upgraded version of its model GPT-6 Sol, and a premium speed tier called “Ultrafast,” among other launches and updates.
OpenAI’s announcements came as Altman’s industry peers were meeting with President Donald Trump Tuesday. While many in Silicon Valley have called for the government to help establish guardrails for the technology, Trump has pushed back against the idea of greater government oversight of AI.
While Altman was not in attendance because of the conference, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman was at the White House, along with Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Several other industry leaders joined them, along with senior administration officials and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
