Good news for the productivity-hacking set!
Last week, OpenAI ran a demo of its latest product, Operator, that can book you a restaurant table. Reservations provider OpenTable got a starring role in the demonstration video as OpenAI’s Yash Kumar, seated next to CEO Sam Altman, demonstrated how to ask Operator to make a reservation with the service.
OpenAI is probably best known for ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot it released to the public a couple of years ago. OpenTable was an early partner then, too. But that integration was about suggestions. This one takes action.
Operator is an AI agent, an early version of a consumer-facing bot that’s still learning how to be helpful. The OpenAI team demoed its new tech last week, which performs simple tasks on the web. The company calls it a “research preview,” or, more accurately, a work in progress.
“Book me a table for two at Beretta tonight. At 7pm,” Kumar types, then takes his hands off the computer. Operator clicks around OpenTable’s website, first searching for the San Francisco restaurant, then checking for availability.
While it sounds like Operator might react like a particularly tech-savvy personal assistant, it still needs some help. (Probably as much, maybe more, as a new personal assistant.) To book a reservation through OpenTable, users still have to provide usernames and passwords to log in. OpenAI says it does not store this information.
Still, Sagar Mehta, OpenTable’s chief technology officer told me, “With OpenAI, we see a world where planning the perfect dining experiences becomes completely effortless and deeply personalized.”
Ironically, the restaurant Beretta is deeply personal to me; it’s around the corner from the first apartment I shared with my husband in San Francisco. We’ve been there hundreds of times. I called him into the room as I was watching; it’s always exciting to see your local on the world stage.
“Beretta has two locations, where’s the other one?” he asked, frowning, when only one Beretta appeared on the screen as Operator attempted to book.
I didn’t ask OpenTable about this detail. And to be fair, the second location did make a very brief onscreen appearance in a drop-down panel of search results. That location, much newer than the original, is designated differently on OpenTable by its address, Beretta Divisadero. Presumably, Kumar would have needed to specify this location by name in the initial query, or would have had to use the “take control” prompt — readily available at various points in Operator’s process — at some point to help guide the bot.
(Point made, husband. It’ll take time for the robots to understand the nuance of what we’re asking when we give it instructions. When tech journalist and fellow San Franciscan Casey Newton prompted Operator to help him place an Instacart grocery order, for example, Operator tried to buy him milk from a supermarket in Des Moines.)
Back in demo-land, Operator determined there were no Beretta tables available at 7, and suggested Kumar book at 7:45 instead. It took about two minutes to get through the process and, as Altman was quick to note, “In practice, you wouldn’t have had to watch this, you could just let it go off while you do other things.”
Still, husband was not impressed. “Product demonstrations are never real!” he called over his shoulder as he walked out of my office. (The next day we went to dinner in San Francisco, booked the old-fashioned way, through OpenTable’s app. I did not time my experience.)
When OpenTable announced its OpenAI partnership nearly two years ago, CEO Debby Soo was bullish (and excited) about the partnership. ”It could very well be a significant or important piece of traffic and demand for restaurants,” she told me at the time.
That’s probably still true, but it’s super early., “It’s worth reiterating that Operator is a research preview, which means we’ll be working with OpenAI to understand the role of agents and optimize their impact on the dining and booking experience for users,” an OpenTable rep told me.
Right now, Operator is available only to users in the US with a $200 per month ChatGPT pro subscription; the company will roll it out to more users in the future. “Europe will, unfortunately, take a while,” Altman said during the livestream.
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