ChatGPT gets apps: now you can book a trip, build slides, and make playlists without leaving the chat (www.techradar.com)

OpenAI has launched in-chat apps for ChatGPT, letting third-party services like Spotify, Canva, Zillow, Expedia, Booking.com, Figma and Coursera operate directly inside conversations. Instead of opening external sites, users can ask ChatGPT to perform tasks — build a playlist, design slides, book travel, or create a real-estate listing — and the bot will invoke the relevant app, request permission, and, if needed, connect accounts to take action. Apps “join” the conversation contextually (ChatGPT may suggest Expedia when you say “plan a trip”), are interactive, and surface what data they’ll share the first time they’re used. Technically and strategically this shifts ChatGPT from a chatbot to an app platform: OpenAI is offering an SDK so developers can build apps now, and is rolling the feature out globally today except in the EU. That creates convenience and tighter workflows but also concentrates distribution power with OpenAI — it can shape app discovery, ranking, and monetization (details of developer revenue-sharing are still TBD). For the AI/ML community this signals a new modality for model integration (contextual app invocation, permissioned data flows, account linking) and raises product, privacy and platform-competition questions as conversational interfaces start acting as storefronts rather than just assistants.