ChatGPT Now Has Its Own Office Suite. Decide Where Your Files Live First.

OpenAI announced something Tuesday at its developer conference that looks a lot like a Microsoft Office competitor living inside ChatGPT. There's a shared workspace called Space where your pages and files sit together like a drive, a word processor called Pages, and collaborative Slides you can build by talking to it. Sam Altman's line was that "spaces feel alive," and what he means is that agents can work inside them alongside your people.

Those agents are called Dots. They run all day, they learn what matters to you, and they work through more than 4,000 connected apps. Per OpenAI, Pro and Business Premium subscribers in eligible markets get the first Dot at no extra charge. Space and Pages are open on the Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, and Slides is rolling out over the next few weeks.

Why a Toledo Shop Should Care

Most small businesses I work with already have a mess. Quotes in one person's Google Drive, the price sheet on somebody's desktop, a customer list in an email attachment from 2023. Now there's a fourth place that's shiny, free to try for some people, and a lot of fun to use. It's going to get files dropped into it by whoever on your team likes new things, and you won't be told.

That's the part I'd deal with first. A Space is a shared spot, so whatever goes in is visible to whoever's invited, and an agent with access to it can read all of it too. Put a customer list or an employee file in there because it was convenient on a Tuesday and you've got a problem nobody decided to create.

The Half Hour I'd Spend This Week

Sit down and answer one question in writing: what's allowed in a ChatGPT Space at our shop, and what isn't? Keep it short. Something like "marketing drafts and meeting notes are fine, customer lists, pricing sheets, payroll and anything with a signature on it stay where they are." Send it to your team in an email today. It doesn't need to be fancy.

Then find out who's paying for what. A Dot is tied to an account, and if somebody at your shop signed up on a personal card with a personal email, the Space and everything in it leaves with them when they go. Ask around. I'd bet at least one person already has an account you didn't know about.

Last thing, and this one matters if you're on a Business plan. Check what your admin settings say about connecting outside apps. Dots reach into those connections, so the rule about what can be connected is really the rule about what a Dot can touch. If nobody's looked at those settings since you set the account up, now's the time.

None of this means you should stay away from it. Pages and Slides might save your office real hours, and I'll probably be teaching them in workshops before the year's out. I just want the decision about where your files live to be yours and not something that happened because a new button showed up.