As 2025 draws to a close, OpenAI has quietly reshaped the foundation of consumer AI interaction with its new Apps SDK for ChatGPT, built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP). This launch represents not a simple feature upgrade, but a paradigm shift — where the chatbot ceases to be a static text box and becomes a fully interactive platform.
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ChatGPT
Through the SDK, external services can now appear inside ChatGPT with live buttons, carousels, maps, and visual interfaces. Instead of linking out to websites, users can complete tasks — booking flights, creating presentations, analyzing data — within the same conversational thread. The rollout began with strategic verticals like travel, design, education, and music, accompanied by native tools for data analysis, file processing, and web search. The applications are accessible to all non-EU users across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans.
The New AI Travel Experience
Expedia has turned natural language planning into a seamless travel concierge. A request like “Find flights from Boston to London next month with hotels under $200 per night” now generates a dynamic carousel of real-time results. Users can fine-tune filters — dates, amenities, travelers — without leaving the chat. When ready to purchase, they are redirected to Expedia’s site for checkout.
This approach positions ChatGPT as a planning hub rather than a search tool. Users no longer navigate through fragmented booking sites; instead, they iterate within one conversational journey. Booking.com mirrors this logic, offering live listings and interactive maps that condense the search-to-booking cycle. Together, these integrations elevate ChatGPT from an assistant to a comprehensive trip-orchestration platform, likely foreshadowing partnerships with Uber or Tripadvisor to extend this closed-loop travel ecosystem.
Real Estate Enters the Conversation
Zillow, the sole real-estate partner, brings property browsing into the same conversational flow. A prompt like “Show me houses for sale in Kansas City” delivers photo galleries, pricing, and location maps directly in chat. Potential buyers can explore neighborhoods, set filters, and connect with agents on Zillow — all within a single interaction.
This model eliminates the tab-hopping inefficiency of traditional house hunting. Zillow gains visibility among millions of ChatGPT users, while consumers experience a frictionless exploration process that fuses curiosity, research, and action.
Learning in Context: Coursera’s Embedded Education
Education emerges as one of the most profound use cases. Coursera’s integration allows users to summon structured learning directly through chat commands — “Teach me the basics of machine learning”. ChatGPT responds with recommended courses, brief previews, and direct enrollment links.
By embedding micro-learning into natural conversation, Coursera transforms ChatGPT into a lifelong learning companion. This fusion of immediacy and intent bridges curiosity with certification, granting Coursera a gateway to OpenAI’s vast weekly audience while reinforcing ChatGPT’s credibility as a cognitive tool rather than mere entertainment.
The Visual Workspace: Canva and Figma
Canva transforms ChatGPT into a lightweight design studio. Through natural language prompts, users can generate marketing posters, logos, and slides with live previews rendered inside the chat. The workflow continues seamlessly in Canva’s editor for advanced customization.
Figma extends this to collaborative design. Its FigJam integration lets teams sketch flowcharts or diagrams directly in conversation — commands like “Create a sales process diagram” instantly yield editable prototypes. Users can refine elements, then open the file in Figma for detailed adjustments.
Together, Canva and Figma redefine how creative work begins. What used to require switching between brainstorming, wireframing, and design tools can now happen fluidly in a single conversational workspace.
Soundtracking the Conversation: Spotify Integration
By linking a Spotify account, users can request tracks or playlists by mood — “Play some soft jazz” — and receive real-time recommendations. Free users get curated playlists, while Premium users enjoy full personalization. Clicking a track opens Spotify directly for playback.
This subtle embedding turns ChatGPT into a lifestyle node: users chat, plan, and design while music accompanies the flow. For Spotify, the benefit is renewed discovery — each recommendation doubles as engagement and conversion.
Automation as Dialogue: Zapier’s Command Layer
Zapier connects ChatGPT to more than 8,000 productivity apps, translating human language into automated workflows. A sentence like “Add this to my spreadsheet and notify the team on Slack” becomes a trigger sequence executed across multiple platforms.
Once authenticated, ChatGPT can handle repetitive operations — from sending emails to updating CRM data — without breaking conversational context. This turns the assistant into a universal command hub, where thinking, doing, and delegating coexist in real time.
Built-In Tools: Data, Files, and the Connected Web
ChatGPT’s Advanced Data Analysis tool now handles complex datasets, generating charts, merging spreadsheets, or identifying insights through live Python execution. Users can directly import files from Google Drive or OneDrive, interact with full-screen tables, and customize visuals for presentation.
Connectors provide secure access to cloud services like GitHub or SharePoint, enabling quick data retrieval and synchronized collaboration. Some connectors, such as Gmail or Calendar, even activate automatically when relevant. Enterprises can also create custom connectors through MCP, aligning internal systems with ChatGPT’s conversational interface.
Web Search complements these capabilities by providing live, citation-backed answers. ChatGPT intelligently decides when to search, ensuring users receive up-to-date information while preserving reliability through verified sources.
ChatGPT as a super-app for cognition
Specialized Apps Expanding the Frontier
Tools such as AskYourPDF and Wolfram showcase the ecosystem’s diversity — from document summarization to scientific computation. Their integrations hint at a near-future where specialized reasoning and retrieval blend into one fluid interaction model.
Strategic Implications: From Plugins to Ecosystem
The shift from plugin-based commands to in-chat applications represents a deeper philosophical change. With MCP, multiple apps can now interoperate within the same dialogue: a user might plan a conference trip with Expedia, design a flyer in Canva, and schedule follow-up emails through Zapier — all without ever leaving ChatGPT.
This convergence positions ChatGPT as a super-app for cognition — a place where discovery, creation, and execution merge. For users, the experience is one of continuity; for developers and enterprises, it’s a new distribution channel to reach OpenAI’s enormous active base.
However, the benefits come with trade-offs. Partner companies risk becoming invisible “back-end” providers behind ChatGPT’s unified interface, losing direct brand recognition. Reliability and data privacy standards must also evolve to ensure user trust as cross-app data exchange becomes routine.
What Lies Ahead
OpenAI has signaled plans to extend this framework to logistics and services such as food delivery, ride-hailing, and outdoor activities. Enhanced search will deepen integration across shopping, travel, and productivity categories.
If executed responsibly, ChatGPT could emerge as the central operating layer for everyday digital life, where apps communicate as seamlessly as users do. The key challenge will be sustaining transparency, control, and privacy in a world where conversation itself becomes the new interface.
In essence, 2025 marks the year when ChatGPT stopped answering questions — and started orchestrating action.
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