OpenAI’s next “low-key research preview” has arrived.
This time, it’s not ChatGPT, but a coding agent dubbed Codex that is being made available to ChatGPT Pro, Enterprise, and Team subscribers starting Friday. By drumming up comparisons to how ChatGPT was first described, CEO Sam Altman and other company leaders are positioning Codex as the company’s next major product. It doesn’t cost extra to use for now, though OpenAI plans to eventually charge for access once it gets a sense of demand.
The goal for Codex is to make ChatGPT a “virtual coworker” for engineers, Josh Tobin, OpenAI’s research lead for agents, said during a press call I attended this week. Like other vibe coding tools, Codex generates code from natural language. It can act independently on sandboxed code to fix bugs, run tests, and suggest changes to how code should run in the real world. This process can take anywhere up to 30 minutes, and OpenAI plans to let Codex work in the background for longer over time.
Codex is integrated into ChatGPT’s web app to start, but it’s intentionally cut off from being able to access the internet to mitigate security risks. It’s powered by a version of OpenAI’s o3 reasoning mod …
