WIth OpenAI’s new app store now open, design execs at Canva, Figma, Adobe, and Target explain their first integrations into ChatGPT and answer the question: What even is an app when it’s part of a conversation with AI?

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When Apple launched the App Store in 2008, it was impossibly influential to the future of the internet. The all-powerful world wide web was sliced and diced into bite-sized apps oft-dubbed Web 2.0. What followed was not just software that fit in your pocket. From TikTok to Uber, these camera-wielding, GPS-integrated, cloud-connected platforms changed the way we lived.

Now, in the wake of AI, the app store is arising anew. But instead of being built as tappable icons inside a mobile OS, they are plugging directly into the conversations of LLMs like Microsoft CoPilot and Anthropic’s Claude.

Today, OpenAI—the largest AI platform with 800 million weekly users—is opening ChatGPT for any developer to integrate their app right into the flow of conversation (pending review and approval). Following a pilot earlier this year, now any developer can plug in their own apps to be suggested contextually during any chat, or summoned by a user by @’ing their specific name. [Image: Adobe]

Early partners like Adobe will let you edit images right in the flow of conversation (complete with sliders to tweak them), while Target will pull up any manner of product to buy. No matter your feelings on AI, the tools seemed destined to change the way we think about apps and even multitasking, by shifting us from software based upon nouns (Canva, Figma) to verbs (“build a slide deck”).

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“It’s not going to feel like you’re entering through a front door anymore. You’re kind of meeting these [users] at a very specific moment in time,” says Bryant Jow, a designer at OpenAI overseeing app integration. “I really think one of the most important things is that it should not feel like there’s a learning curve or that you have to re-anchor yourself. It should just kind of feel like immediately and instantly intuitive.” [Image: Canva]

Indeed, the promise from all the partner companies I spoke to is to fulfill what LLMs generally only tease. We brainstorm all sorts of ideas inside AI chats, but when it’s time to bring them to life, we can hit a wall. This is where integrated apps can show up, offering their finer tuned services. But the devil is in the details. And very few of the details have been fully worked out.

“If you remember the first apps that people made on the App Store, like the beer drinking app [iBeer], they were like, whatever, right? A lot of people took a moment to figure out how do we behave in this ecosystem? What do we build? How do we provide utility? And how do we optimize for that?” says Gui Seiz, who........

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