OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free? | The Verge
OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free? | The Verge
摘要: AI
OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?
OpenAI and Meta’s cutesy AI agents are about to fight to the d
正文
OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?
OpenAI and Meta’s cutesy AI agents are about to fight to the death.
Hayden Field
Oct 1, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC
A pop-up shop for “dots,” a personal assistant agent at OpenAI DevDay 2026. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
| Getty Images
OpenAI’s new agent is a shot at Meta — but can it compete with free?
OpenAI and Meta’s cutesy AI agents are about to fight to the death.
Hayden Field
Oct 1, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC
OpenAI DevDay 2026: The biggest news and announcements
see all updates
Hayden Field
is The Verge’s senior AI reporter. An AI beat reporter for more than five years, her work has also appeared in CNBC, MIT Technology Review, Wired UK, and other outlets.
At OpenAI’s annual DevDay conference, the company pulled out all the stops to compete with its rivals — primarily Meta, whose Muse AI agent platform has seen early runaway success. CEO Sam Altman walked onstage to cheers and announced Dots, a “real-deal AI” agent powered by GPT-6 Astra, “inspired by the cool agents that we all watched in movies growing up.” Similar to Muse, Dots aims for disarming cuteness, taking the form of colorful, personalizable blobs with eyes. OpenAI fired shots at Meta by demonstrating Dots’ ability to not just act as helpful assistants but build metaverse-esque virtual worlds. But in one key area, Dots strikingly fails to compete: price.
Muse’s main selling point is making AI agent access free and frictionless. The company offers a free dedicated virtual machine that houses both the agent and the user’s associated data. OpenAI’s Dots, by contrast, is restricted for now to users on its $100/month Pro plan and up. While anyone with a Meta account can get Muse, most of ChatGPT’s 1.2 billion users won’t be able to use Dots.
There’s an obvious reason for this: OpenAI likely can’t afford it. The AI lab is reportedly curren