ChatGPT could soon watch your screen and attend meetings: Altman says a future version may monitor screens, calls, email, and Slack within six months.

ChatGPT could soon watch your screen and attend meetings: Altman

ChatGPT could soon watch your screen and attend meetings: Altman has predicted that a future version of the AI assistant may continuously observe a user’s computer activity, join meetings and calls, and access information from email, documents, and Slack. In an interview with Z Fellows founder Cory Levy, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman estimated that such a system could become genuinely useful within the next six months.

Altman’s comments point toward a more contextual, always-on AI assistant that understands what users are doing across their digital lives rather than simply responding to individual prompts. He described a potential descendant of ChatGPT that “watches your computer screen all the time, watches every meeting you’re in, records every call,” and maintains “perfect context of your whole life, everything you see.

What Altman described

According to Altman, the envisioned system would:

• Monitor the user’s computer screen continuously.
• Follow meetings and calls, potentially recording and transcribing them.
• Access email, documents, and collaboration tools such as Slack to build a comprehensive context model.
• Use this context to anticipate tasks, automate workflows, and provide proactive assistance.

The goal is to move from reactive chat-based interactions to an assistant that understands ongoing work, knows which projects are active, and can act on behalf of the user with minimal explicit instruction.

Current steps in that direction

While Altman did not announce a specific product or launch date, OpenAI has already begun rolling out features that move in this direction:

• Computer History (macOS only): An optional, opt-in feature for Pro users that turns mouse clicks, keystrokes, app switches, and keyboard shortcuts into a timeline of activity. This timeline is used to help ChatGPT and Codex understand how a user works and suggest automations.
• Memories: A separate feature that allows ChatGPT to retain information across chats. Computer History requires Memories to be enabled so that context can persist between sessions.

OpenAI emphasises that Computer History:

• Does not take screenshots or record audio.
• Excludes private-mode web browsing.
• Stores raw event files locally on the Mac, isolated within the ChatGPT app’s data container.
• Deletes raw event files after 48 hours, though processed “memories” may be retained.

Privacy and security concerns

Security researchers have raised concerns about the implications of such features:

• Local memory files are not encrypted, meaning other programs running under the same macOS user account could potentially read them.
• Feeding a model this much real-time context increases the risk of prompt injection attacks, where malicious instructions embedded in websites or documents could influence the AI’s behaviour.
• Malwarebytes’ Mark Beare has warned that these files could give infostealers a “ready-made map of someone’s workday” if compromised.

OpenAI acknowledges these risks in its documentation and notes that Computer History is unavailable in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom due to regulatory considerations.

Why this matters

Altman’s six-month timeline suggests that OpenAI sees continuous context as the next major frontier for AI assistants. If realised, such a system could:

• Transform how people work by automating routine tasks and surfacing relevant information proactively.
• Raise significant questions about privacy, data security, and workplace surveillance.
• Require new safeguards around consent, data retention, and user control over what the AI can see and remember.

For now, Altman’s comments remain a prediction rather than a confirmed product roadmap. OpenAI has not announced a product name, release date, or final specification for an assistant with full screen and meeting access.

Summary: ChatGPT could soon watch your screen and attend meetings: Altman says a future version may monitor screens, calls, email, and Slack within six months. While OpenAI has not announced a specific product, features like Computer History point toward more contextual, always-on AI assistance — with significant privacy and security implications.