OpenAI Thursday introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT, a feature called “Canvas.
This innovation opens a separate window next to the regular chat window, providing a workspace for writing and coding projects. Users can create writing or code directly in Canvas and mark up parts of their work for editing by the model. Canvas will be released in beta to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users on Thursday, and to Enterprise and Edu users next week.
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Many consumer AI providers are converging on editable workspaces as a practical approach to using genetic AI. ChatGPT’s new interface offers features similar to those of Anthropic’s Artifacts, which launched in June, as well as the viral coding program Cursor. OpenAI is trying to follow its competitors’ offerings by introducing new features to ChatGPT to bolster its paid user base.
AI chatbots are currently not capable of completing large projects with a single prompt, but they can often provide a good starting point. Editable workspaces, such as Canvas, allow users to correct parts of an AI chatbot’s output that are incorrect, without having to revise their prompt and create an entirely new piece of code.
“This is a more natural interface for working with ChatGPT,” said OpenAI product manager Daniel Levine in a demo with TechCrunch.
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In the demo, Levine selected “GPT-4o with Canvas” from ChatGPT’s model selection drop-down menu. However, OpenAI says that Canvas windows will appear once it detects that a separate workspace might be useful, for example, for larger outputs or complex coding tasks. Users can also automatically open a project window by simply typing “use Canvas.”.
Levine also showed how ChatGPT’s new features can help with composing an email. Users can ask ChatGPT to compose an email, which appears in the Canvas window. They can then adjust the length of the writing using a slider. They can also highlight specific sentences and request changes, such as “making it friendlier” or adding emoji. Additionally, users can ask ChatGPT to rewrite the entire email in another language.
The coding features of Canvas are slightly different. Levine asked ChatGPT to create a web server API in Python, which appeared in the Canvas window. By clicking the “add comments” button, ChatGPT adds built-in documentation to explain the code in plain language. Additionally, if you highlight a section that ChatGPT created, you can ask the chatbot to explain it to you or ask questions about it.
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ChatGPT also has a new “review code” button, which suggests specific modifications to the code in the window, whether it’s generated or written by the user, giving them the option to approve, edit, or reject. If approved, ChatGPT will proceed to fix the errors.
Source: techcrunch
