OpenAI released a "research preview" of its first agent Thursday — Operator, a tool that can do web tasks for you. Why it matters: With 2025 shaping up to be the year of the AI agent, AI firms are racing to free AI from the chat box and set it loose in the world.

The new tool, called Operator, is an AI agent: It relies on an AI model trained on both text and images to interpret commands and figure out how to use a web browser to execute them. OpenAI claims it has the potential to automate many day-to-day tasks and workday errands.

The company says the CUA’s reasoning technique, which they call an “inner monologue,” helps the model understand intermediate steps and adapt to unexpected input. Under the hood, CUA takes screenshots of web pages and uses a virtual mouse and keyboard to navigate.