ChatGPT Agent: 50 Use Cases for Business Leaders

As my colleague Evelyn discussed on Tuesday, OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent is an AI assistant that doesn’t just chat, it acts on your behalf.

In practical terms, this means that ChatGPT Agent can think and operate using its own virtual computer, performing tasks from start to finish.

OpenAI’s ​release notes​ describe it handling requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” or “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck,” all autonomously.

It can browse websites, click links, fill out forms, run code, and use tools, asking for your permission when needed, to complete multi-step tasks online.

In short, we’ve moved from reaction to action.

Now it’s not perfect yet (while one writer ​planned an entire date night​ in 10 minutes, Wired suffered through ​58 minutes for Agents to order some cupcakes​), but it’s the clearest articulation yet of how AI might be even more useful to us.

What You Need to Know About ChatGPT Agent

This agentic capability is a natural evolution of what we’ve seen before: Operator could interact with websites, Deep Research synthesized information, and ​Connectors provided access to your data​. Now, ChatGPT Agent merges those skills into one AI that “thinks and acts” for you.

As I’ve mentioned before, this feature highlights the rapid pace at which AI is evolving, from simple chatbots in 2023 to multi-modal capabilities in 2024, and now to fully agentic helpers.

Here are some things to know about ChatGPT Agent:

• Availability: The feature is rolling out to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Team subscribers, with delays announced for Enterprise accounts and restricted markets, such as the EU.
• Limits: For Pro users, there is a monthly cap of 400 Agent prompts, while Plus and Team users are limited to 40 prompts per month. (If and when this feature will be available for free ChatGPT users remains unknown.)
• Activation: In any ChatGPT web or desktop conversation, select the “Tools” dropdown in the composer, then choose “Agent.” On mobile phones and iPads, choose the agent icon. If you don’t see it, you don’t have access yet.
• Actions: In the web version, clicking Agent also shows suggested use cases, which you can use to start exploring the feature if this list doesn’t provide enough inspiration.
• Creation: Agent reignited fears of ​AI websites​ being replaced by OpenAI, starting with creating Presentations and Excel files.
• Control: It asks for permission before real actions, and you can interfere with the process at any time.
• Real-Time Oversight: You can monitor its “​chain-of-thought​” as it performs tasks and even intervene mid-task. You can also watch a ​replay of previous assignments​.
• Scheduling: Agent ​allows you​ to schedule repeated tasks, like preparing the same KPI report every Monday morning.
• Personalization: ChatGPT Agent, for security reasons, currently ​doesn’t have access to Memory​. This means it won’t be able to use what it knows about you to personalize results.
• Performance: Sneaked into the presentation, as Antony Slumbers remarked in the community, was a revealing stat: ChatGPT Agent ​beats​ o3 on key benchmarks.
• Reduced Hallucinations: ​Testing​ by AI professor Ethan Mollick showed that Agent leads to ​preventing hallucinations​, with more human-like ‘errors’ instead.
• Expectations: For advanced use cases, as ​Nate Jones’ testing highlighted​, lower your expectations. Expect decent results from Excel templates and connecting to your own data.
• Slowness: Related to that and in line with the cupcake experiment, most reviewers highlight how this is a ‘background tool,’ performing tasks ​much slower​ than a human.
• Safety: OpenAI warned explicitly about how Agent unlocks a new level of security threats. Be extremely mindful of what you use Agent for. For this reason, Agent will also refuse to handle financial matters.

Top 50 Use Cases of ChatGPT Agent for Leaders

Having an AI think + act for you should drive major productivity gains.

Especially for business leaders: “We’ve tried to build a product with a whole lot of enterprise use cases,” ​said​ Yash Kumar, the product lead for ChatGPT Agent.

But what exactly are those use cases?

That’s what I set out to study and brief you on this week.

Below, I’ve compiled 15 reported use cases of ChatGPT Agent for senior leaders that others have tested and documented (I still don’t have access), plus 35 more that we can imagine from those.

These examples demonstrate how the agent can save time, automate complex workflows, and serve as a digital teammate in various scenarios.

General Tasks

As we spend half of our time on emails, chats, and meetings, let’s start by looking at these use cases:

1. Email Summarization and Inbox Triage.

By connecting to your email (via Gmail, Outlook, etc.), the agent can summarize long email threads or daily inbox activity. It will highlight the important points and even draft brief responses.

The email triage, as tested ​here​ by Ishan Sharma, means saving time by letting AI prioritize emails or even reading the agent’s summary of 20 emails.

2. Summarizing Teams Messages.

Imagine you’ve been out of the office and come back to an avalanche of Teams messages. Rob the AI Guy simply asked ChatGPT Agent to review his Microsoft Teams messages from the past week.

The agent scanned conversations via API, summarized key updates, cited sources, and generated a prioritization list of who to respond to first. The task was completed in under 5 minutes. Note: Rob highlights that this could also be done with Gmail or Outlook, making it a powerful tool for reentry after a period of absence.

3. Meeting Preparation and Briefing.

Agent can prepare you for upcoming meetings by pulling context from your calendar and the web. As ​suggested by OpenAI​, ask it to “brief me on my client meeting tomorrow,” and it will gather recent news on the client, past meeting notes, and key talking points in seconds. You get a concise briefing package without needing a human assistant to prep it.

4. Slide Deck Creation.

ChatGPT Agent can create ​editable slide decks​ for you. It can summarize a project report or market research into a PowerPoint presentation, complete with key bullet points and even simple graphics, without delegating it to an analyst or doing it yourself.

In this demo, Wes Roth tasked Agent to compare long-term investment returns. The agent browsed for fund data, wrote Python code to calculate compounding growth, and generated a PowerPoint presentation with charts, projections, and takeaways.

5. Calendar Analysis.

‍Rob also asked ChatGPT Agent to audit his Google Calendar over the past six months and report how his time was spent.

In just 12 minutes, the agent categorized events (work, commuting, personal, etc.), calculated time allocations, and presented a breakdown, e.g., 26% work, 44% personal/relationships. It also linked back to source calendar entries for transparency.

Financial and Analysis

6. Financial Modeling.

Rob the AI Guy tasked ChatGPT Agent with building a full discounted cash flow (DCF) model for an energy company, starting from 2025 projections.

The agent conducted web research, extracted necessary financial inputs (revenue, debt, cash flow), reasoned through assumptions, and generated a detailed Excel model with valuation outputs—all in 17 minutes.

7. Data Analysis and Visualization.

The agent can analyze spreadsheet data and generate insights, accompanied by charts or tables. In ​one demo​, it parsed an Excel sheet for a financial analyst and created a slide deck unpacking Nvidia’s Q1 earnings.​‍

In the above demo from OpenAI, Agent does its own research and creates an editable Excel spreadsheet. So now, rather than just getting an in-chat answer, you can ask, “Analyze our sales spreadsheet and show trends,” and Agent will produce a mini-report highlighting key metrics.

8. Analysis of Internal Documents.

‍In an OpenAI demo, ChatGPT Agent was instructed to access internal Google Drive files via API, extract evaluation results, and generate a presentation summarizing model benchmarks.

The agent read the correct file, wrote code to generate visuals, created charts, and produced a downloadable PowerPoint deck. It also used the image generation tool to enhance visual polish.

Marketing

9. Blog Post Creation and Publishing

Wes Roth had ChatGPT Agent log into a WordPress site, draft a blog post about its own process, insert images from Unsplash, format the content correctly (e.g., H1/H2), and publish the post.

The agent navigated the WordPress UI like a human, made corrections in real time, and completed the task in under 20 minutes.

10. Product Research.

In a test by The Verge, Agent was asked to “shop on Etsy for a vintage lamp and flowers”; it searched, captured screenshots, recorded prices, and produced a curated list.

Another demo showed Agent creating a research report on Labubus versus Beanie Babies. I could see how this would help marketers quickly gather visual references and competitive price data for mood boards or product decisions.  

In this demo by “IA per tutti”, Agent also does market research, and then inputs the results into a Google Doc, something that previously required an AI automation:

HR, Employee Engagement, and L&D

11. Candidate Sourcing.

Ishan Sharma asked ChatGPT Agent to help hire a YouTube manager by submitting a job description and instructing it to search LinkedIn for qualified candidates in Bangalore.

After logging into his account, the agent browsed profiles, filtered for relevant experience, and compiled a spreadsheet with LinkedIn URLs and portfolios.

12. Company Offsite Planning.

Ishan also asked ChatGPT Agent to plan a two-day offsite for 11 people within a specific budget and considering dietary preferences.

The agent conducted deep research to find flights, trains, buses, local transport, accommodations, restaurants, and activities—complete with source links and booking options. What’s different from Deep Research is the action: in ​this demo​, you can then also see it perform the actual booking.

You can see similar functionality in an OpenAI team demo, where ChatGPT Agent was tasked with preparing for a wedding: suggesting weather-appropriate mid-luxury outfits based on the venue, recommending hotels, and identifying suitable gifts.

The agent used its virtual computer to browse fashion and travel sites, compared product options, and linked directly to book or purchase. It also clarified missing details (e.g., wedding date) by inferring from context.

13. End-to-End Course Creation.

‍SuperIntelligent’s Nathaniel Whittemore challenged ChatGPT Agent to create a complete self-paced course titled “Getting Good at Agent Management”.

The agent combined deep research with syllabus design, generating seven modules including context engineering and multi-agent orchestration, a set of resource-linked activities, and a capstone project bank.

14. Create and Order Merchandise.

OpenAI team members used ChatGPT Agent on mobile to design and order 500 laptop stickers featuring the team’s mascot, “Bunny Doodle.”

The agent generated anime-style art using its image generation tool, selected Sticker Mule as the vendor (per the user’s preference), and initiated the order. The workflow included creative design, vendor selection, and purchase, all from a single mobile prompt.

36 Additional Use Cases for Agent 

The above use cases have been researched, tested, and documented, as Agent has just rolled out. 

But it’s not hard to think about many more ways in which the new feature can take work off our plates. Here are 36 more potential use cases:

1. Calendar Management and Meeting Scheduling. Agent could coordinate calendars, identify mutual availability, and schedule or reschedule meetings automatically without manual back-and-forth.
   
   
2. Email Drafting and Responses. Agent could take rough notes or bullet points and generate polished, correctly toned emails ready to send to clients, executives, or internal stakeholders without manual interference.
   
   
3. Report Generation and Formatting. Agent could turn raw notes, project updates, or data into structured, well-formatted reports ready for sharing as PDFs or editable documents.
   
   
4. Data Analysis and Visualization. Agent can analyze spreadsheets, calculate trends or KPIs, and generate charts or visualizations to support decision-making.
   
   
5. Spreadsheet Cleanup and Updates. Agent could clean messy Excel files, update data, fix formatting, and preserve styling while performing calculations or applying formulas.
   
   
6. Market Research and Competitor Analysis. Agent could scan competitor websites, reviews, and industry reports to generate a comparison of offerings, features, and positioning.
   
   
7. Paperwork Filling. Agent could log into a portal, populate every field of a multi-page form, uploaded supporting PDFs, pause for user approval, and submit the data.
   
   
8. Quick Fact-Checking and Data Lookup. Agent could search across credible sources to validate a statistic or pull recent data without needing to dig through multiple tabs.
   
   
9. Brainstorming Ideas and Strategies. Agent could help generate new ideas for campaigns, product features, or strategic directions using creative prompts or constraints.
   
   
10. Social Media Content Drafting. Agent could take a blog post or press release and turn it into tailored social media posts for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram in different tones, then post it directly.
    
    
11. Internal Document and SOP Writing. Agent could convert chats or bullet points into formal SOPs, onboarding guides, or process documentation for team handoffs, and share it out.
    
    
12. Weekly Progress Summaries. Agent could scan task boards, status docs, or project tools and write a progress update email or one-pager summarizing accomplishments and blockers.
    
    
13. Customer Support Assistance. Agent could draft responses to customer inquiries based on your help center or support logs, speeding up ticket resolution.
    
    
14. Help Desk Ticket Triage. Agent could review incoming IT tickets, categorize them, assign owners, and escalate urgent issues, functioning as a tier-1 triage assistant.
    
    
15. CRM Updates and Pipeline Management. Agent could log into your CRM, update deal stages, add meeting notes, or clean up contact data after calls or demos.
    
    
16. Personalized Sales Outreach. Agent could generate tailored outreach emails to prospects by referencing details from their websites, past interactions, or LinkedIn profiles.
    
    
17. New Hire Onboarding Automation. Agent could automate onboarding steps—sending welcome emails, scheduling intro calls, and sharing documentation with new team members.
    
    
18. Employee Training Simulations. Agent could simulate realistic training scenarios, such as handling a customer objection or responding to a phishing attempt, with interactive feedback.
    
    
19. Internal Knowledge Base Building. Agent could review internal chats, docs, and emails to extract and organize recurring questions and answers into a structured knowledge base on a schedule.
    
    
20. Project Management and Sprint Planning. Agent could analyze sprint boards or project trackers to propose a plan for the next cycle, including priorities, owners, and timelines.
    
    
21. Cross-Platform Workflow Automation. Agent could string together actions across tools, like log a form entry in your CRM, notify a Slack channel, and create a task in Asana.
    
    
22. Website Content Updates. Agent could log into your CMS and update website content, upload new images, or publish blog posts using your brand’s tone and format.
    
    
23. Launching Micro-Products or Prototypes. Agent could build and deploy simple digital products like landing pages, forms, or interactive tools using code and hosting APIs.
    
    
24. Coding and Debugging Support. Agent could write Python or JavaScript scripts to automate tasks, analyze data, or debug existing code for tech leads and operators.
    
    
25. Code Review and Optimization. Agent could scan codebases for potential issues, suggest improvements, and auto-generate documentation for maintainability.
    
    
26. Data Extraction and Scraping. Agent could browse websites, extract structured data (e.g., pricing tables, product lists), and export it into Excel or CSV.
    
    
27. Appointment Scheduling with Service Providers. Agent could contact and book appointments with professionals like dentists, consultants, or vendors by comparing availability.
    
    
28. Investor Report and Board Presentation Prep. Agent could gather company performance data and create a board-ready presentation covering metrics, milestones, and risks.
    
    
29. Online Form Filling and Data Entry. Agent could fill out repetitive online forms like compliance, grant, or HR submissions using stored user data and formatting preferences.
    
    
30. Marketing Campaign Management. Agent could run multi-channel campaigns, coordinating content creation, scheduling posts, and optimizing messaging based on early results.
    
    
31. Client Proposal and Pitch Writing. Agent could turn rough notes into client-facing proposals or sales decks, customized with relevant case studies and benefits.
    
    
32. Legal Case Management and Research. Agent could assist legal teams by organizing case materials, tracking deadlines, and conducting first-pass research on legal questions.
    
    
33. Procurement and Supply Chain Assistance. Agent could collect vendor quotes, compare products or services, track shipments, and create purchase order drafts.
    
    
34. Monthly Reporting Automation. Agent could gather data from dashboards or exports, generate visuals, and compile monthly business reports on a set schedule.
    
    
35. Cross-Department Coordination. Agent could gather updates from multiple departments, summarize them, and produce unified reports or presentations for leadership.
36. File Management and Organization. Agent could search, rename, organize, and summarize files across cloud storage platforms to keep your digital workspace clean.
    

ChatGPT Agent for Work: The Bottom Line

It’s early days, but ChatGPT Agent has all the potential to help senior leaders reclaim time and create higher-quality work.

As AI strategist Mahesh Devalla ​put it​, companies that embrace Agent early on are “already shipping faster, learning faster, and scaling faster, while most companies are still scheduling the next AI discussion.”

In other words, the potential applications are vast, even if Agent isn’t perfect today.

If you start to at least experiment with Agent for tasks like the 50 listed above, you will remain ahead of the game.