In October, OpenAI debuted its Canvas feature, a collaborative interface that visually previews the AI response to the user’s writing or coding request. However, it was only made available as a beta feature for Plus and Teams subscribers. On Tuesday, the company announced that it is bringing Canvas to all users, even at the free tier.
While one could easily mistake Canvas for a blatant knockoff of Anthropic’s Artifacts feature, OpenAI is also incorporating a swath of new capabilities into Canvas. For one, Canvas is now integrated directly into the GPT-4o model so that it runs natively within ChatGPT, eliminating the need to select it specifically from the model-picking list.
The platform is now also capable of running Python code within the Canvas interface, allowing ChatGPT to analyze the code and offer suggestions for improving it. And it’s not just Python code; users can text prose or code directly into the Canvas interface, rather than upload it through the standard chat interface, then load it into the Canvas window.
The newly integrated Canvas is now also compatible with OpenAI’s custom GPTs, which should make them easier to design and build without deep programming knowledge. And if you make a mistake, the Show Changes feature will highlight which bits of prose or code were most recently altered.
Canvas is available on the web and through the Windows desktop app. “We plan to continue making improvements and launching new features available in Canvas in the near term,” the company wrote in its announcement.
This news comes amid OpenAI’s inaugural “12 Days of OpenAI” marketing effort. To date, the company has (finally) debuted its Sora video generation system, which can generate 20-second clips in resolutions up to 1080p, as well as released the full version of its o1 reasoning model family and introduced a $200-per-month Pro subscription tier needed to access them.
