Apps in ChatGPT: Yes, talking to your apps is a thing now

Spotify, Expedia, Booking, Canva, and several other companies have already built apps for ChatGPT. These are available in OpenAI’s public directory, with more to come in the next few months, including Uber, DoorDash, and OpenTable.

Users can bring apps into a conversation by name or ChatGPT can suggest an app when it is relevant. The first time an app is used, ChatGPT will ask the user to approve its use and may start a login flow if the service requires authentication. This ensures the user is always in control of what data is shared.

To test this new feature I asked ChatGPT to use Spotify’s app to “make a playlist with Ed and Taylor. Make it upbeat. Throw in a few surprises from similar artists.” Within seconds, Spotify created a playlist directly in ChatGPT, complete with a deep link to open it in the Spotify app. ChatGPT even understood that “Ed and Taylor” referred to Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.

The real magic happens when apps bring interactive interface elements into the chat. For example, Booking.com can show hotel search results that match the user’s prompt directly inside ChatGPT, including photos, star ratings, prices, and an option to complete the booking on Booking.com’s website or in its mobile app.

Inside the new ChatGPT app model

This walkthrough shows how real app experiences work inside ChatGPT, including interactive UI, backend integration, and production-ready use cases. Watch the full webinar to see the complete breakdown of the platform shift.

We jumped right into the new ChatGPT Apps SDK as soon as it became available. Within days, we had our first proof of concept up and running: an app that lets ChatGPT control Philips Hue light bulbs in the real world.

A quick note: the app appears slower than it actually is because it was running on a MacBook and iPhone that were both connected through a VPN. ChatGPT apps are not yet available in the EU, and we simply could not wait to get our hands on the technology.

The flow works end to end. Users grant our ChatGPT app access to control their lights through a standard OAuth flow, and then they can adjust their lights through chat or voice. The app can turn lights on and off, change their colors, and control lights across an entire room at once.

One of the most interesting technical details is how the Philips Hue API handles color. It expects colors to be represented as XY coordinates in the CIE 1931 color space, which is not something most people are familiar with. By using clever prompting inside the tools exposed to ChatGPT, we taught it to translate natural language colors like “red,” “orange,” or “warm white” into the format the Hue API understands.

The trickiest part of the project was working through the Apps SDK documentation and example projects. The documentation feels like it was written by several engineers at once, with examples that shift between chapters and GitHub samples that don’t always match what the text describes. There is a lot to piece together on your own.

Even so, building this proof of concept has been an excellent way to get hands-on experience with ChatGPT apps and the Apps SDK from day one. This project only scratches the surface of what is possible, but it has given us a strong foundation to explore even further.

Want to see what this means in practice?
Watch our on demand webinar 'The next platform shift', where Framna experts unpack how OpenAI’s new tools are reshaping digital products.

At Framna, we believe that chat and voice-driven interfaces like the one introduced with apps in ChatGPT will play an important role in the future of digital products.

Just days before OpenAI announced apps for ChatGPT, Meta launched the new Meta Ray-Ban Display, a pair of AI glasses with an integrated display, controlled by voice and subtle gestures. It does not take much imagination to see how a product could combine the seamless chat experience of apps in ChatGPT with AI glasses to create delightful voice-first experiences.

As users, designers, and developers, we are in the middle of a paradigm shift. An app’s interface is no longer something you only touch or control with peripherals. You control it through dialogue and voice. The interface becomes the dialogue itself, as users engage with products through intent expressed in natural language.

OpenAI has already announced that they are working on ways for companies to publish their ChatGPT apps for the public directory and monetize them. They expect apps in ChatGPT to be available in the EU soon, so now is the right time to start thinking about what your AI-first digital product looks like.

Apps in ChatGPT are built on MCP, a technology that has become familiar in the AI community over the past few years. MCP, short for Model Context Protocol, is an open standard that connects AI applications such as ChatGPT to external systems so they can retrieve data, manipulate it, and perform advanced workflows.

MCPs are HTTP-based services that follow a standard protocol allowing ChatGPT to communicate with the outside world. These services can be built in any programming language, with Python and TypeScript being popular choices.

The MCP server is the foundation of the Apps SDK that developers use to bring experiences to life in ChatGPT. The MCP exposes tools that the model can call to perform operations, handles authentication, and provides structured data and HTML that ChatGPT can render inline.

The technology that apps in ChatGPT build upon is already proven and reliable. OpenAI is now taking it to the next level with the Apps SDK, enabling companies to build seamless and rich experiences in ChatGPT that are as straightforward for users to get started with as installing an app on their phone.

The introduction of apps in ChatGPT marks a fundamental shift in how customers interact with digital products. Instead of clicking, scrolling, and navigating through menus, they will now be able to chat and talk with your brand directly in ChatGPT, on the web, and through voice assistants.

For companies, this brings both a challenge and an opportunity:

• The challenge: If your product is not ready to be part of a conversational experience - in chat as well as voice, you risk becoming invisible in a world where users expect interactions to happen naturally through dialogue.
  
  
• The opportunity: You can meet customers where they already communicate - in ChatGPT,  and deliver personalised, frictionless experiences that feel like a conversation rather than a transaction.

For the past many years, Google has been many people’s preferred way to discover products, but that might soon be a thing of the past.

OpenAI expands on apps in ChatGPT to build full-fledged product discovery and transaction flows right within ChatGPT. They call this Agentic Commerce, and by utilizing its Instant Checkout feature, customers can shop for products directly from ChatGPT.

If a user asks ChatGPT for the best hairdryer under DKK 500, it will search the web for matching products and present them in order of relevance to the user and enable users to select “Buy,” confirm their order and shipping details, and complete the purchase without ever leaving ChatGPT. This poses a challenge: if your competitors are there and you are not, you are missing out on sales.

This experience is built on the Agentic Commerce Protocol, a standard OpenAI built in partnership with Stripe. Shops processing payments with Stripe already support this, while other shops can adopt the Agentic Commerce Protocol to participate in Agentic Commerce.

E-commerce businesses that want to be ready for the next era of shopping on the web will want to adopt Agentic Commerce.

If the original App Store defined the mobile era, this could define the next decade of AI products. Seventeen years ago, people picked brands based on who had an app in the App Store. Soon, they may pick brands based on who has a chat app.

At Framna, we help companies identify where chat- and voice-driven interfaces create real value, prototype AI-driven user journeys, and build the technology that brings them to life.

Whether you want to explore your first ChatGPT app or rethink your product around conversation and intent, we can help you define the right strategy and get to a tangible prototype within weeks.

Connect with Framna to discuss how conversational interfaces and AI-native design can shape your next digital product.