Dots are OpenAI’s cute lil guys | The Vergecast

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of cute little AI agents that are definitely not dots. They're like different shapes. I'm David Al. Yesterday, OpenAI hosted its annual Dev Day. It's its big annual conference where it shows what's on the frontier of what it's developing. This year, there's a lot of companies that are all rushing to make vaguely the same thing. And the biggest news this year was OpenAI's new dots. Dots are little agents that will go do things for you, but with one big quirk. They're really cute. I brought on senior AI reporter Hayden Field to talk about it. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. I'm Travis Larchuk, and this is 90 seconds on The Verge for Wednesday, September 30th, 2026. We didn't see any smartome stuff at Apple's September event, but according to Bloomberg's Mark German, we're about to on October 13th. He says that's when Apple will debut its long rumored Smartome hub, which will maybe be called the HomePad or something else. Who knows? We should also expect a new HomePod mini and an upgraded Apple TV. According to German, Apple Home users have been waiting on these updates for literally years. So, what's another Fortnite to wait? Next up, Instagram announced a new AI creative assistant that will give you feedback on your posts and suggestions on how to increase engagement. YouTube announced a similar feature recently, and I know that this feels icky to some people, but personally, I'm interested. If you make content for social media, you know that sometimes it's really hard to figure out why one thing hit and another thing didn't. It feels arbitrary a lot of the time. And so a tool that can give you suggestions that are data based rather than vibes-based actually feels useful to me. And finally, the most important news of the day. The Vis Nathan Edwards reports that dads in his Texas neighborhood are sending each other single potatoes by drone. They're ordering them from Walmart using wing drone delivery. [music] The dads reportedly discovered that they can have the potatoes delivered to anyone's yard, not just their own yards. And the best part is that each potato delivery only costs 82 [music] total. At that price, you can't afford not to send your neighbor a potato. You can read more at the verge.com. That's 90 seconds onthe verge for Wednesday, September 30th, 2026. Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. Some of us are blessed with a natural ability to do gift giving right. You probably have a few in your life. People who can make a mental ledger of what their loved ones like and buy things here and there throughout [music] the year. My mom has always been the best giftgiver in my life. She could even make the smallest gift feel incredibly special because you knew that she had really thought about that person receiving it. It doesn't have to be the biggest or the most expensive gift. It just has to show someone you were thinking about them. Well, for the rest of us, here's a tip. Prime Big Deal Days is coming October 6th and 7th. That means that for two straight days, you can get deals on those kitchen gadgets for your dad, electronics for your brother, fitness equipment for your bestie, toys for the cousins, and so much more. There's new deals dropping every day, so you can become one of those expert giftgivers that we all know. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all. Mark your calendars. Shop new deals every day this prime big deal days October 6th and 7th. Support for the show comes from IRA by Palo Alto Networks. Here's a statistic for you. Nine out of 10 organizations suffered an identity breach last year. That happens because adversaries are logging in with valid credentials, not breaking in, and nonhuman identities outnumber human identities 109 to one. [music] That creates a massive unmanaged attack surface and cloud environments. The problem is that legacy tools were built to manage human employees, leaving modern machine and AI access largely unmanaged. That's where IDRA by Palo Alto Networks comes in. It's one identity platform for human, machine, and AI. Idea replaces permanent permissions with dynamic access so you can lock down every identity without slowing down your business. Secure every identity at your organization with IDRA by PaloAlto Networks. Learn more at paloaltoetworks.com [music] A. Again, that's palotoworks.com/idir A. >> Hayden, thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having me all the way from SF. >> Oh yeah. So, you just got out of the developer conference. This just happened, >> right? Right. Number one thing that the company announced was this AI dots feature. Can you explain exactly what OpenAI chatbt dots? What is the official name for this exactly? So open AAI's dots is basically the company's answer to Meta's Muse and Open Claw. It's the longanticipated continuously running AI agent from OpenAI, the consumerf facing one. You know, this is something that we wrote a couple of days ago that OpenAI really needed to catch up on. It was one of the areas that everyone was looking at the company saying, "Okay, well, where is theirs? It's strange that they're behind on this." That was kind of the the consensus that Meta had suddenly pulled ahead and it was unexpected and that, you know, OpenAI was working on something rumored to be almost the same. Now they've announced it and also they made it really cute. Similar to Meta's Muse, they're basically cutesy little blobs um with eyes and you can customize them however you want. So I think that's part of how OpenAI is banking on people, you know, feeling uh maybe better about using these agents. Same with all the other companies. It's like make them cute, make them customizable, and you know, they're hoping people will be okay with giving them a lot of data. So, OpenAI. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, one of the ones that they demoed was um named Alfred, and it's, you know, you can name it whatever you want. And then, you know, it immediately transformed into like a butler looking blob with like, you know, glasses and a a mustache. I think they had a lot of different um different little blobs on display. But yeah, I think um you know, there's a lot of customizable options. You can change the color. You can change like the eyewear hat maybe. So, there and the name. So, I think they're really, you know, hoping that people kind of go ham on the personalization here. The most interesting part of it though to me is that although this is directly, you know, aimed at uh, you know, kind of gaining users away from Meta's Muse, it's only rolling out to paid users, pro and business users. So, it's not free for um, everyone like Muse is. And so I think that's kind of a interesting hallmark here. The fact that you know OpenAI desperately wants to compete with um Meta on this but they can't afford to fully because it's such a compute inensive product. >> Yeah. Besides having an embodiment of this agent, the primary question that I have is how exactly is this different from just a regular chat GPT chat that can do things for you? You know, if you're using Claude Co-work can go control your computer. What is it about these agents that are uniquely different from just using the regular service? >> Essentially, there's a couple different ways. Um, they can go off and do things for you in the background continuously even without you having the window open, you know. So, that's a big selling point for people. You know, they don't have to, you know, keep their computer open and stay stay awake or whatever. They can just go off and live their life and the agent is doing stuff in the background. Another part of it is that of course uh you know you're supposed to be able to text with them, maybe phone call with them, talk to them in a way that um you know is really accessible for people beyond just like a chat GBT chat window. However, OpenAI was even behind in that because they said the texting and calling function will be coming soon, >> not right now, you know. So, that's a lot of this is I think frontloading something so that they have a horse in the race, but you know, there are a couple features that they haven't yet rolled out. >> So, OpenAI noted that they have over 4,000 integrations for these dots. For people that don't know, what is an integration? Yeah, basically an integration is like the way that these agents are useful at all because you know you could use an agent in a vacuum but okay that's not that helpful. The way that they become useful is using them for your life and for with the other tools that you use. Like think about if you had a personal assistant and then they didn't have any of your loginins. You know, I was a personal assistant back in the day and I needed my boss's Sky Miles number. Um I needed her calendar access. I needed um her like email login basically everything for her whole life. So same thing with these agents you know integrating with different platforms you use different tools um different accounts and yeah with open AAI it's interesting because >> they don't naturally have a bunch of this stuff inhouse. So their integrations may work a little worse with certain products than you know say Google's AI agent is going to have better integrations with Google products. Meta's AI agent is going to have better integrations with Meta products. So, you know, O OpenAI is really gunning for the oh the the quantity, you know, of integrations maybe over some of the quality um because they don't have anything in house, but they're like, well, you know, we can connect to everything. It's just >> it it's going to be they they basically are saying it's going to be good, but it might not be as good as some of these other companies inhouse AI agents, >> right? I also heard something about these specialist dots that they're announcing. Can you uh explain what those are? >> They're launching these specialist AI agents that are aimed at being really good at certain niche um enterprise functions. So, you know, one for legal, one for marketing, one for accounting, things like that. And they launched with a bunch of partners um to start like um Harvey, Lora, a bunch of different companies um you know that are in these different fields. So, it'll be interesting to see how those play out. I don't know if they're live yet, but they will be soon. And so, yeah, they're supposed to be, you know, agents that are just, you know, really good in a certain field. Um, and, you know, they can kind of, uh, be a co-orker in that sense where, you know, they're senior and they they've been in the field for a long time is kind of the way they're [clears throat] positioning it, >> right? Because Muse is sort of around for listing things for you on Facebook Marketplace, which, you know, we've had some problems with so far already. It's supposed to do things for you in your personal life. A lot of people use chat GPT and a lot of people probably have pro. People that have pro are, you know, it's $20 a month and they can access these uh dots. Do you think that they're going to see a lot of interesting use cases from this or do you think that it's primarily targeted at work? I think that we are going to see people interested and trying it out, but I don't think it's going to be as general purpose as Meta's Muse because with Muse, it's such a easy um access situation. You know, it's a one tap and you're you're good. Uh with DOTS, not only do you need to be a prouser of Chat GPT, but also um you know, there's a little bit more friction in terms of integration. So I think you know with Meta a lot of this stuff just automatically seamlessly integrates into all meta products and same with Google um you know they have a bunch of existing in-house stuff. So I think that with OpenAI there's a little bit more friction there. They did try to talk a lot about how they're overcoming that friction and how you know there's a lot of different um you know signins and you know apps that you can use with these things but I still think there is more friction to adopting this and people are already a little bit uncomfortable with AI agents to begin with especially you know with the AI populism rise and also the news of how AI agents can be pretty nonsecure uh with handling your data and your stuff not only muse with Facebook marketplace and those u missteps, but also um back when OpenClaw was especially viral, uh you know, all the security issues that happened there, deleting emails, things like that. So, you know, it'll be interesting to see how people how many people choose to trust OpenAI with um a lot of this data. They did make a a big point to talk about privacy um and data privacy in particular on stage today. So, you know, they they did anticipate, I think, some of that push back, but yeah, we'll see. I mean, right now, they they did announce today that 1.2 billion people use chatbt, so it'll be interesting to see how much of a chunk of those people are going to try DOT. [music] Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. Some of us are blessed with a natural ability to do gift giving, [music] right? You probably have a few in your life. People who can make a mental ledger of what their loved ones like and [music] buy things here and there throughout the year. My mom has always been the best giftgiver in my life. She could even make the smallest gift feel incredibly special because you knew that she had really thought about that person receiving it. It doesn't have to be the biggest or the most expensive gift. It just has to show someone you were thinking about them. Well, for the rest of us, here's a tip. Prime Big Deal Days is coming October 6th and 7th. That means that for two straight days, you can get deals on those kitchen gadgets for your dad, electronics for your brother, fitness equipment for your bestie, toys for the cousins, and so much more. There's new deals dropping every day, so you can become one of those expert giftgivers that we all know. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all. Mark your calendars. Shop new deals every day this Prime big deal days, October [music] 6th and 7th. Support for the show comes from Sonos. Think about the first time you heard your favorite song. Who were you with? What did it make you feel? Was it the music or the lyrics that grabbed you first? And what were the specific tech specs of the sound system it was playing on? Yeah, nobody remembers that last part. Sonos gets that. [music] Their system is designed to just be there, clear, ready, out of the way, so nothing stands between you and the next song that hits you out of left field. For a bunch of years now, I've been incredibly jealous of my friends who have Sonos speakers. I was just always impressed how all that sound and punch and energy came from that speaker in the corner. But Sonos recently sent me two of its play speakers and now I truly truly get it. Everyone knows that the quality is immediately noticeable when you listen to a Sonos speaker. But the bigger thing that I've learned is how everything is working together and creating this little ecosystem. It's just really important to me, especially as audios become more integrated into our daily media lives. Whether that's music, a movie, and yes, the Vergecast or Virgin History or decoder, I want it to sound as good as possible. Visit sonos.com and build your system. Sonos. Love the sound. Feel the system. As you were alluding to, the Metam Muse agent has been under a little bit of fire recently for some mishaps that it's uh done agentically. Of course, you know, we've seen these agents do things to governments. Now we're seeing them do things to regular people. One of them was that someone was selling something on Facebook Marketplace and [snorts] without even telling the user, it told someone his address, it told him that he was there and ready to come down and and give him and sell the item when he just like wasn't there. All of this was automated. There were some problems with this. Did OpenAI address any of these issues or maybe some potential issues that these agentic objects are going to start doing? They talked about the fact that, you know, this is going to be really secure, really private, really trustworthy. But I was chatting with Glenn Coats, um, the head of app platform at OpenAI in a one-on-one interview today, and he said that he thinks they're in a different position to Meta in that, um, they since they have 1.2 billion users, um, they want to launch something that doesn't make those types of mistakes. And you know, they're trying to really be deliberate with how they let agents use plugins and how they allow agents to use people's identity and sign in and sign up for things, how they let agents pay for things. And they're also working with third party standards bodies about how agents will attest that they're an agent when they're doing things, like how they'll how they'll say, "Hey, I'm an agent on behalf of, you know, XYZ." So he said, "We might move a tiny bit slower." Um, but basically, you know, they don't want to have agents that are yolo buying stuff on Facebook Marketplace for, you know, 1.2 billion users. So, you know, essentially all of that translates to we're moving a little slower than Meta, but we hope it's safer. And, you know, the jury's out still on if that is the case. We'll have to test it, >> right? How important do you think it is for Anthropic or Google to develop something of a similar caliber, right? We've seen Grockbot um notably looks really similar to these little Muse agents, you know, we've seen Jack Dorsey's project, which has little guys that kind of look similar to this. There's a big push in Silicon Valley right now to make agents look really cutesy and have these little agents you can interact with every day. Do you think it's important for Anthropic or Google to make something similar like this? >> Yeah, I mean, I think it's incredibly important. This is something that I have been seeing AI companies talk about for years. Um, you know, I think 2023, uh, was when AI agents had their chatbot between moment in terms of them getting really buzzy and, you know, executives talking about them non-stop on earnings calls. Um, really promising investors that this is the next big thing, the thing that's finally going to, you know, break through and make a ton of money. So, OpenAI's answer to that is, okay, we're only going to give it to paid users and we're going to go really hard on enterprise anthropic, you know, we'll see. I'm sure it'll be a similar similar offering. Mhm. Right now you can only have one OpenAI dot per account, but they said that more are coming in the future. Do you think that that's a limitation in any way or do you think that OpenAI is just worried about people spinning up a thousand of these agents and kind of running them because notably it does not count against your chat GPT usage limits which seems like a big deal. So do you think that that's the reason they're limiting it for now? >> Yeah, they said that um it was a really computeheavy product. um during the press Q&A, Sam Alman said, you know, someday we'll be able to offer these for free to everyone. Um you know, or we hope so, but right now, you know, it takes a lot of comput. And so, I think that's the same reason why they're only offering one right now. They want to see how it goes and then maybe offer more later. But yeah, I do think it's a limitation in some ways. You know, the power users that are going to be really obsessed with this, like, you know, exoplaw users potentially um are used to having a bunch of agents working on their behalf. So it with a subset of people I think it will be a limitation for others you know if they're trying to make this a general purpose product that everyone wants to try I don't think it's going to be much of a limitation there >> right do you think that they'll probably introduce a free version for free users eventually >> they said they hope so but you know it seemed he used the word someday so you know I [clears throat] don't think that's uh happening anytime soon at least ahead of their IPO I would imagine >> right well this is the major news from the dev day event but were there any other big events or happenings at the event? >> I think the other big thing I was really thinking about is um the protests happening outside. A lot like more than a dozen organizations came together to kind of um you know unite and plan this protest outside that day that was going on from um early in the morning until about the time that um Sam Alman arrived and started his keynote. And so you know there were art pieces outside there were a ton of protesters marching in a circle. There were a lot of chants um a lot of different signs. most of them were protesting um you know AI lab contracts with military and the government particularly ICE. Um so yeah it was really interesting to see how many different organizations came together. It was even sponsored in part by the San Francisco Labor Council. So yeah I mean it it definitely made waves. Everyone saw um these people when they were going inside and so I think um that is something that you know was definitely a topic of discussion today. Um, another thing that I thought was interesting was um the fact that the voice function um for dots uh was not working the entire time at de like they tried to demo that a couple times it did not work. So uh you know at least we know it was a live demo but >> it also showed you know they may have rushed this. We don't know. So uh you know probably after getting a lot of questions about where's your answer to Muse. I mean, I'm sure they said they've been working on this for a long time, so I'm sure they always, you know, to plan to Yeah. Yeah. They plan to, you know, show it off at Dev Day, but, [music] you know, it shows the kinks aren't all worked out necessarily. >> Yeah. Well, Henfield, thank you for coming on. Appreciate [music] it. >> Thanks. That's it for the Vergecast. Let us know what you think. Call the hotline 866 Verge11 or email vergecastverge.com. [music] And to support everything we do here and to get ad free podcasts, subscribe to the Verge. We're part of [music] the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Vers is produced by Josh Kahas, Eric Gomez, Brandon Kefir, and Travis Laruk. See you next time. Rock and roll.