OpenAI brings codex to your phone
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
OpenAI's AI coding agent Codex is coming to the ChatGPT mobile app Thursday.
Why it matters: OpenAI is trying to make Codex cheaper and easier to use as it battles Anthropic for developers and enterprise customers.
Driving the news: Mobile access to Codex will let users review outputs, make approvals and start new tasks from mobile.
- Start something from a computer at home and then go out to the coffee shop and approve the final output over your matcha.
Zoom in: Additional updates will allow models to be used more seamlessly within certain industries, including:
- Support for HIPAA-compliant use of Codex in local environments for ChatGPT, allowing hospitals and healthcare organizations to further adopt AI tools.
- Developer tools like automatic prompt checking or code validation.
Reality check: Approving agents on your phone could lead to greater risk for errors when users are multi-tasking on a small screen.
Yes, but: increasing Codex usage also means consumers will be using more compute, the most precious resource of the AI labs.
OpenAI's strategy has been defined by compute subsidies to increase usage.
Zoom out: The announcement comes one day after CEO Sam Altman announced that any companies who switches to Codex will get two months worth of free usage.
- That came after reports of Anthropic raising prices.
- Anthropic's coding tool, Claude Code, is available on mobile through what it calls remote control sessions.
Between the lines: This has become a familiar pattern between the rivals.
- Anthropic lifts prices due to surging demand, OpenAI lowers them in hopes of taking market share.
The bottom line: OpenAI wants its coding tools to be more accessible and widely adopted.
