OpenAI introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT on Thursday: an interface it calls “canvas.” The product opens a separate window, beside the normal chat window, with a workspace for writing and coding projects. Users can generate writing or code directly in the canvas, then highlight sections of the work to have the model edit. Canvas is rolling out in beta to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users on Thursday, and Enterprise and Edu users next week.
Several consumer AI providers are converging around editable workspaces as a practical way to use generative AI. ChatGPT’s new interface offers similar features to Anthropic’s Artifacts, launched in June, and the viral coding companion, Cursor. 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.
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 showed TechCrunch how ChatGPT’s new features could help write an email. Users can prompt ChatGPT to generate an email, which will then pop out in the canvas window. Then users can toggle a slider to adjust the length of the writing to be shorter or longer. You can also highlight specific sentences, and ask ChatGPT to make changes such as “make this sound friendlier,” or add emojis. Users can also ask ChatGPT to rewrite the whole email as-is in another language.
The features for the coding canvas are slightly different. Levine prompted ChatGPT to create an API web server in Python, which spawned in the canvas window. By pressing an “add comments” button, ChatGPT will add in-line documentation to explain the code in plain English. Further, if you highlight a section of code that ChatGPT created, you can ask the chatbot to explain it to you, or ask questions about it. ChatGPT is also getting a new “review code” button, which will suggest specific edits for the code in the window, whether generated or user-written, for them to approve, edit themselves, or decline. If they press approve, ChatGPT will take a stab at fixing the bugs itself.
Once canvas is out of beta, OpenAI says it plans to offer the feature to free users as well.