By William Gavin

Personal AI assistants are shaping up to be the new frontier for tech companies

OpenAI has introduced its rival to Meta's Muse and other artificial-intelligence agents: Dots.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman kicked off the company's developer day with a new product: a team of "remarkably capable" and "remarkably cute" personal assistants called Dots.

"This is the real-deal version of AI that we've always imagined for ourselves," Altman said during his keynote at OpenAI's annual conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. "It's like an AI helper that always has your back, inspired by the cool versions of what we all watched in movies growing up."

OpenAI is billing its "always-on" AI agents as something more than a tool for making dinner reservations or scheduling appointments. Rather, the tools are meant to take on both personal and professional work in a proactive way.

Dots are OpenAI's answer to the current craze around AI agents designed to make users' lives easier by handling tasks like scheduling trips or canceling subscriptions. Meta Platforms' (META) agent, called Muse, kicked off a wave of mainstream interest after its launch earlier this month.

The startup Instinct is also in the game and investors have taken notice. On Monday, Instinct quadrupled its valuation to $10 billion in a funding round partially meant to boost its ability to meet robust consumer demand. SpaceX's (SPCX) Grok Bot has also seen early success, according to data from the market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower.

"Meta's Muse has awakened many new AI uses for consumers and illustrated the types of breakthroughs we can expect from AI, once we address user interface and diffusion," Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, previously told MarketWatch.

Meta's shares have increased 25% over the past month after Muse's launch rallied investors.

OpenAI's launch is a bit limited. Users can only have one Dot agent, although the company plans to allow access to teams of agents in the future. That said, OpenAI also introduced ChatGPT Space, a platform where teams of people and their agents can work with Dots.

Altman said that users can customize instructions and implement custom rules that prohibit what Dots are capable of. Experts have said that privacy and security concerns could limit the influence of personal agents, since they often need sensitive information to carry out certain tasks.

"This allows you to trust your Dot with as much responsibility as you're comfortable with," Altman said.

Dots are powered by GPT-6 Astra, which OpenAI calls its most capable and aligned model, trained to refuse "harmful requests." On Tuesday, the company introduced a new model called GPT-6.1 Sol, which it said provided nearly as good performance as Astra for a fifth of the price.

The first Dot is included for OpenAI's Pro or Business Premium subscribers, the company said. Both tiers cost $100 a month. OpenAI on Tuesday also introduced Pro 500, a $500-a-month subscription plan that includes a new "ultrafast" mode for Astra.

Don't miss: Meta turned Muse into a viral hit. Now comes the hard part.

-William Gavin

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09-29-26 1434ET