OpenAI president Greg Brockman, in an interview with Joanna Stern, admitted that the recent redesign of the ChatGPT desktop app, which merged it with Codex and introduced a 'Work' agentic mode, is "kind of a mess." The initial interface confused users, making it difficult to find chat history. OpenAI later updated the app to include separate 'Work' and 'Chat' tabs and a drop-down menu for switching between ChatGPT and Codex.

Brockman explained that this is "incremental progress towards the future," aiming for a tab-free design where the 'Work' functionality will "seamlessly mold into ChatGPT." He anticipates the 'Work' tab will be removed by the end of the year. Despite the rollout issues, Brockman noted significant user growth for Codex, from 5 to 10 million users in days, attributing it partly to integrating it into the ChatGPT app to help more people leverage AI.

The interview also touched upon ChatGPT Voice, OpenAI's hardware ambitions, the Apple lawsuit, and a recent Hugging Face hack. Brockman envisions AI agents reaching mass consumer scale, enabling users to gain more value from AI.