OpenAI Launches an Agentic, Web-Based Coding Tool

OpenAI is launching a cloud-based software engineering agent called Codex as the hype surrounding building software using AI continues gathering pace. This tool, aimed more at professional coders rather than amateur vibe coders, will let developers automate more of their work in a way that should be both safer and less opaque than existing tools.

OpenAI’s Codex is available through the web for ChatGPT Pro users from today. It can generate lines of code but also move through directories and run commands inside a virtual computer, automating more of the work that developers go through when writing code.

“We're about to undergo a pretty seismic shift in terms of how developers can be most accelerated by agents,” says Alexander Embiricos, a member of the product team at OpenAI working on agents.

The latest models from rivals Anthropic and Google are already both highly skilled at coding. This OpenAI launch has preempted Google’s expected release of a more capable coding tool at its I/O event next week, according to a report in The Information. According to numerous reports, OpenAI is in talks to acquire Windsurf (formerly Codeium), a startup that makes a popular AI coding tool, for $3 billion.

A key challenge with vibe coding is that delegating to AI can result in software that is opaque and more difficult for a person to understand and fix when bugs creep in. OpenAI says the model behind Codex has been trained to explain what it is doing more clearly and help developers fix what they are building and that the use of a virtual computer makes the system safer by design.

It is already possible to write and analyze code using ChatGPT and similar chatbots. OpenAI already offers a Codex command-line tool that can generate code.

The new web-based Codex, which OpenAI calls “research previous,” runs its own mini computer within a browser. This allows it to run commands, explore folders and files, and test the code it has written autonomously.

“That's really the way that we think most development is going to happen in the future,” Embiricos says. “The agent will work on its own computer and will delegate to it.”

OpenAI says that Codex is being used by outside companies including Cisco, Temporal, Superhuman, and Kodiak.

Vibe coding has become a phenomenon thanks to a generation of AI models that are remarkably good at writing and fixing code. The same models allow more skilled developers to speed up their work, too.

OpenAI has launched two other agentic AI tools over the past year: Operator, which controls a web browser and can automate online chores, and Deep Research, which carries out detailed web search and analysis in order to compile reports.

Josh Tobin, who leads the agents research team at OpenAI, says Codex reflects a bigger vision for ChatGPT to evolve from a chatbot into a teammate. “We think that ChatGPT will become almost like a virtual coworker,” Tobin says. “Where you can go to it not just for answers to quick questions [but also to] collaborate with it on larger chunks of work across a wide range of different tasks.”

Update 5/16/24 11:40 am EST: This story has been updated to clarify that Codex is not designed for vibe coding.