OpenAI’s Attempt to Catch Up With Anthropic Could Cannibalize Its Business

OpenAI closed out its big week of fundraising news with a rather understated product announcement: the release of Canvas, a new ChatGPT interface that makes it easier for users to draft documents and code.

That might not sound like a big deal. But it has bigger implications for the company’s position in the AI race and its relationship with its customers than you might think.

With Canvas, users can open up a separate window beside ChatGPT’s normal chat window to work on writing and coding projects. There, they can highlight specific sections of their text or code for OpenAI’s model to edit, or use shortcuts for common actions like fixing bugs in their code or lengthening or cutting a piece of writing. 

That’s a departure from the traditional ChatGPT interface, which typically requires users to scroll up in their chat history to find earlier responses or completely regenerate entire documents or lines of code from scratch if they’re not happy with what ChatGPT produced.