OpenAI brings codex to your phone
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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 Anthropic tightened limits for some paid subscribers.
- 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.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that Anthropic is not raising prices, but is putting the use of third-party coding tools behind a new credit meter.
