ChatGPT Pulse: Daily Proactive Updates You Can Curate
OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Pulse, a mobile Pro preview that performs daily asynchronous research to deliver personalized, visual update cards. Users shape what appears through a “curate” request and quick feedback, with optional Gmail/Calendar integrations adding more context and safety checks filtering content. It’s designed to be concise and actionable, and marks the start of a broader move toward a proactive assistant with more app integrations and capabilities.
Key Points
- Pulse proactively researches overnight and delivers daily, personalized update cards based on your memory, chat history, and feedback.
- Users can curate topics via a “curate” request and quick reactions; safety checks prevent harmful content.
- Optional Gmail and Google Calendar integrations (off by default) add context for agendas, reminders, and recommendations.
- Updates are concise and ephemeral—available for the day unless saved or continued—aiming to inform without keeping you scrolling.
- This preview will evolve from Pro toward wider availability, and is a foundational step toward a proactive assistant that can research, plan, and take actions across more apps.
Sentiment
Overall, the Hacker News discussion expresses a predominantly negative and skeptical sentiment towards ChatGPT Pulse. Many commenters are disillusioned with the perceived lack of real innovation, express strong privacy concerns, and worry about the societal and mental health implications of increasingly proactive and personalized AI assistants.
In Agreement
- AI can significantly boost personal productivity and help complete arduous or procrastinated tasks when used with critical thinking.
- A truly personalized, proactive assistant that curates information, reminds of goals, or aids in consistent learning/therapy is a welcome, potentially useful concept.
- The development of new UX features like Pulse does not necessarily slow down underlying model innovation, as different teams handle distinct product layers.
- While privacy concerns are acknowledged, the potential for useful benefits from data access for a highly personalized AI assistant is considered a plausible trade-off by some.
Opposed
- ChatGPT Pulse is viewed as a 'mediocre rehash' or 'solution to a problem nobody asked for,' signaling a lack of genuine innovation from OpenAI and akin to past tech hypes like blockchain.
- Concerns about privacy and data harvesting are rampant, with fears that Pulse is a step towards 'surveillance capitalism,' 'ad delivery,' or 'infinite scroll' AI echo chambers designed to collect more user data.
- Significant worries are raised about the mental health and societal impacts of proactive, personalized AI, including potential for addiction, false personification, creation of 'tailored realities,' and erosion of critical thinking and shared human experience.
- Skepticism about LLM capabilities persists, noting they don't have 'wants' or 'feelings,' are prone to agreement without genuine thought, and are ultimately 'expensive text auto-completion engines,' leading to disillusionment when promised AGI doesn't materialize.
- Criticism that OpenAI is focusing on 'application layer stuff' and 'peripheral products' instead of 'making the best models,' suggesting a strategic misstep or a 'running out of ideas' phase.