ChatGPT's new Intelligent UI makes answers more visual

OpenAI is about to make ChatGPT a lot more visual. The company is rolling out a new feature called Intelligent UI on Wednesday alongside a new GPT-6 model, folding a significant amount of visuals directly into users’ conversations with the chatbot. OpenAI says many of those visuals will be interactive — tappable buttons, a customized calculator for a specific task, interactive charts, and editable graphs the user can work with directly, instead of the flat, cartoonish pictures ChatGPT has mostly relied on until now.

OpenAI says the goal is to make learning complex topics easier, and the update could also make ChatGPT feel friendlier and more accessible to a wider audience — though OpenAI did not frame it that way itself. In a call with journalists, OpenAI staff demonstrated Intelligent UI’s capabilities by having the chatbot instantly generate diagrams and other visuals meant to help users understand more abstract topics.

Aarush Selvan, a product manager at OpenAI, said that while ChatGPT has so far been predominantly a text-based interface, the company wants to help users get things done, and that for everyday requests — planning a recipe or a trip, or trying to learn something — “the most helpful answers aren’t just text.” As an example, he described a college student asking ChatGPT to explain how an airplane wing generates lift, prompting the chatbot to produce diagrams showing how planes stay airborne. Other examples OpenAI showed included visuals for recipes, a diagram of bicycle mechanics, a map for a multi-day hiking trip, and a personal savings calculator.

The feature is customizable: as with other aspects of ChatGPT’s personality, users who don’t want as many visuals in their responses will be able to dial them back. Intelligent UI rolls out globally with GPT-6 for ChatGPT’s Pro, Plus, Business, and Enterprise users, and arrives Thursday for people on the free and lower-cost Go tiers.

Why it matters

As AI assistants compete partly on ease of use, a shift toward interactive, generated visuals rather than plain text could reshape how people expect chatbots to help with everyday tasks like planning, learning, or budgeting.