OpenAI has introduced Dots, a new agent product built to run continuously instead of waiting for a prompt.
OpenAI detailed the launch in a post on its own site titled "Dots: Always-on agents," published today. The company frames Dots as a break from the request-and-response chat model that has defined most AI assistants until now. That framing is itself the headline: OpenAI is betting that persistent operation, not a smarter underlying model, is what differentiates this launch.
The bet is that agents earn more trust, and more revenue, by working unprompted in the background than by waiting in a chat window. It also hints at where the AI subscription model is headed: from paying per conversation to paying for standing infrastructure that runs whether or not you're watching it.
Whether "always-on" means genuinely useful automation or just more notifications is the question OpenAI still has to answer outside a launch post.