OpenAI Unveils 'Dots' AI Agents as Altman Skips Safety Questions

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman used the company's annual developer conference on Tuesday to unveil a new class of artificial intelligence agents, even as he made no reference to security worries surrounding its most advanced models.

Altman described the agents, called Dots, as "remarkably capable, always-on" and designed to carry out ongoing tasks on users' behalf without waiting to be prompted. He likened them to "an AI helper that always has your back, inspired by the cool versions of what we all watched in movies growing up."

The launch places OpenAI in direct competition with Meta's personal agent Muse, which gained widespread popularity following Meta's own conference the previous week.

Alongside the agents, the company announced the release of GPT-6.1 Sol, an upgraded version of its GPT-6 Sol model, and a premium speed tier branded "Ultrafast," among other product updates.

The announcements came a day after OpenAI said it was holding back the release of a new AI model because of security concerns raised by its own researchers. That decision followed wider calls within the industry to slow the pace of development so that safety measures can keep up.

Altman did not address the shelved model during his stage appearance. He did, however, offer closing remarks framing the current AI boom as closer to a renaissance than an industrial revolution.

"The best version of AI is not about making people cogs in a giant machine, ever whirring faster and faster. There are some parts of life that we cannot and should not automate," he said. "AI should be about giving people more power over their own lives, more tools to create, learn, discover, expand knowledge."

While Altman was at the conference, several of his industry peers gathered at the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Donald Trump. OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman attended in his place, joined by Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Nvidia's Jensen Huang, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Other technology leaders, senior administration officials and House Speaker Mike Johnson were also present.

The meeting underscored a continuing divide over AI oversight: many in Silicon Valley have urged the government to help set guardrails for the technology, while Trump has resisted the idea of greater federal regulation of AI.