New side-by-side document and code-editing feature catches up with Anthropic's Artifacts.
On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled Canvas, a new interface for ChatGPT designed to enhance collaboration on writing and coding projects. The feature bears similarities to a feature called Artifacts in Anthropic's Claude AI assistant, introduced in June. Canvas displays content in a separate window alongside the AI chat history, allowing users to keep an eye on working document drafts or programming code while collaborating with the AI assistant.
OpenAI began rolling out canvas to ChatGPT Plus and Team users globally on Thursday, while Enterprise and Education users will gain access next week. The company also plans to make canvas available to all free ChatGPT users once it exits the beta stage.
Like Artifacts, Canvas is sort of a scratch pad, a way to visually separate portions of the active working context (the user prompt) to keep them from getting lost in the chat backlog. From our experience, Artifacts can ease the process of working on projects with Claude that require editing and revisions, and Canvas functions in a very similar way.
The new Canvas feature uses a special version of GPT-4o (more on that below) that users can manually select from the model picker in the ChatGPT interface while it's still undergoing public testing.
Canvas opens automatically when ChatGPT detects a scenario where it could be helpful. Users can also trigger canvas by including "use canvas" in their prompt or use it to work on an existing project.
Unlike Anthropic's Artifacts, the Canvas interface includes a novel menu of shortcuts for common tasks such as finalizing a document, suggesting edits, and adding emojis. Users can adjust writing length (short to long) or vary topical complexity ("kindergarten" to "graduate school" level) using sliders.