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OpenAI just dropped something that, on the surface, looks like a Tamagotchi.

It’s super easy to launch, just type in /pet in the Codex app to get started.

Then, a small, cute creature lives on your desktop, watches what you're coding, and occasionally chimes in. You can change how it looks. You can give it a personality.

It feels like a toy. And, at least so far, kinda useless.

But I think it might be the most important UX shift OpenAI has shipped this year.

And yes, I’m serious. I promise I haven’t gotten AI psychosis.

Let's get into it!

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We've been here before.

Anyone who lived through the late 90s remembers Clippy, the cheerful Microsoft paperclip who wanted to know if you were writing a letter every time you typed a single sentence.

Clippy got memed into oblivion because the AI behind it was, well… not very smart.

Then came the early wave of voice assistants…

Cortana, Siri, Alexa, all marketed as 'companions' and all mostly used to set timers and play Spotify.

More recently, companion apps like Replika tried to make AI a real emotional presence in your life… which, depending on who you ask, worked a little too well.

Even ChatGPT’s Voice Assistant is less of an assistant and more of a novelty that gets kind of boring to chat with after a bit.

The pattern across every one of these early assistants: cute marketing, an experience that got stagnant, eventual abandonment.

This time… something is actually different.

The reason all those previous attempts felt empty is that the underlying intelligence was either not good or temporary or worse… both.

Now, for the first time, the brain inside the cute thing is not only capable of doing real work but is setting us up for persistent on-going AI to human communication.

Starting with coding is a really clever move. Coding is a contained, low-stakes loop where you can see the AI doing the work (the pet shows what the AI is doing one whatever page you happen to be on) and then come back to it when it’s done.

It’s basically a little consistent reminder that the AI is working while you’re off doing other stuff. If it spots a bug while it's hanging out on your screen, you're delighted. You can see its chain-of-thought so if it’s getting off track, you can steer it back.

It's the perfect environment to get you used to having an AI presence in your peripheral vision all day long.

And once you're used to it sitting there… that's when this starts to get really interesting.

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These Codex pets are for now kind of fun and not that exciting.

But look closely and you’ll see those little pixels are something else entirely…

A Trojan horse.

Today, it's a cute creature that helps you vibe code. Tomorrow, it knows what tabs you have open. In a few months, it'll be keeping track of your calendar, your inbox, the document you started on Tuesday and abandoned by Thursday.

The cuteness is the strategy.

It lowers the bar for letting an AI watch you.

For decades, the dream of a real personal AI (Tony Stark’s Jarvis from Iron Man, the OS from Her) has been blocked by two things: the model wasn't smart enough, and we didn't trust it enough (or like it enough) to let it hang out with us all day long.

The Pet solves both of those at once. The models are now really good. And a tiny smiling animal feels a lot less invasive than a corporate assistant icon.

Sam Altman seems to know this is the next big shift which he hinted at here:

The chat interface (which is still how most of us actually interact with AI) is such a small slice of what's possible. The Pet is OpenAI's first real attempt at something else… something ambient.

I don't know if this exact implementation is the one that breaks through. It might be too cute. It might be too distracting. It might still end up being Clippy.

But the pattern is the pattern.

Get an AI into your daily field of vision in a low-stakes way, let people get comfortable, then expand the surface area until it's running half your life.

We've been waiting on the Jarvis moment for a decade.

And it might just start with a digital pet.

-Gavin

This week on AI For Humans: Are Robots Getting Their ChatGPT Moment?👇

A few weeks back, Kevin shouted out This Ain't Canon's brilliant Tom Cruise "running through everything" mashup.

This week, they did it again. But better.

It's John Travolta walking through every movie. Like, every movie. From The Terminator straight into a Star Wars scene into… well, you'll see.

This is the kind of stuff that makes me want to throw a parade for AI tools.

It's not "replace Hollywood." It's not "the death of cinema."

It's a single creator with taste and a sharp comedic instinct using AI to make remixes that simply could not have been made before.

Go follow them and watch the whole feed.