OpenAI Debuts ‘Canvas’: A New ChatGPT Tool Designed for Writers and Coders!

On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled a brand-new interface for using ChatGPT that it calls "canvas." The software opens a workspace for writing and coding tasks in a separate window that opens next to the standard chat window. Users can write directly on the canvas or use code, then highlight specific areas of their work to have the model make edits. On Thursday, Canvas will go live in beta for ChatGPT Plus and Teams users; Enterprise and Edu users will get it the following week.

A number of consumer AI companies are coming together around editable workspaces as a useful application of generative AI. Similar functionalities are available in ChatGPT's new interface as in Anthropic's Artifacts, which was released in June, and Cursor, the popular coding companion. OpenAI is racing to match competitor offerings, and launch entirely new capabilities in ChatGPT, as a means to grow its paid user base.

AI chatbots today can’t complete large projects from a single prompt, but they can often create a good starting point. Editable workspaces, like canvas, allow users to fix parts of an AI chatbot’s output that are wrong, without having to scrutinize their prompt and generate a whole new stretch of code.

“This is just a more natural interface for collaborating with ChatGPT,” said OpenAI product manager Daniel Levine in a demo with TechCrunch.


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In our demo, Levine had to select “GPT-4o with canvas” from ChatGPT’s model picker drop down window. However, OpenAI says canvas windows will just pop out when ChatGPT detects a separate workspace could be helpful, say for longer outputs or complex coding tasks. You can also just write “use canvas” to automatically open a project window.

Levine demonstrated to TechCrunch how the new features of ChatGPT could facilitate email writing. An email generated by ChatGPT can be requested by users, and it will appear in the canvas window. Next, users have the option to change the writing's length by toggling a slider. Additionally, you can highlight particular lines and instruct ChatGPT to add emojis or make changes like "make this sound friendlier." Additionally, users can request that ChatGPT translate the entire email into a different language.