New ‘Canvas’ interface supercharges ChatGPT’s writing and coding capabilities
OpenAI is adding a new interface called “Canvas” to ChatGPT. This feature aims to enhance collaboration between humans and AI on complex writing and coding projects.
Canvas marks the first major update to ChatGPT‘s user interface since its launch about two years ago, according to OpenAI. he goal is to help ChatGPT better understand project context. The canvas opens in a separate window, allowing users to work on a project alongside the AI model. This approach is similar to Anthropic’s Artifacts feature.
Canvas Blog Demo | Video: OpenAI
Users can also highlight specific sections to direct ChatGPT’s focus for subsequent prompts. The AI can then provide feedback and suggestions considering the entire project, much like an editor or code reviewer.
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Canvas Code Demo | Video: OpenAI
Beta access and availability
Canvas is currently in beta for Plus and Team users. It can be manually activated in the model selection menu during the beta phase. Users can also type “Use Canvas” to launch the feature.
The model has also been trained to automatically open Canvas for specific tasks like “Write a blog post about the history of coffee beans,” but not for general queries such as “Help me cook a new recipe for dinner.”
Enterprise and Edu users should gain access in the coming week. OpenAI plans to make Canvas available to all free ChatGPT users after the beta phase ends.
New writing and coding tools
For writing projects, Canvas offers shortcuts such as edit suggestions, text length adjustments, and reading level changes. Coding projects benefit from features such as code review, inline code editing, logging, and debugging.
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OpenAI emphasizes that users have full control over their work in Canvas. They can edit text or code directly and restore previous versions.
The new interface may also boost ChatGPT’s performance. OpenAI claims the integrated Canvas model outperforms simple GPT-4 prompts without examples (Zero Shot) by 30 percent in accuracy and 16 percent in quality for developer comments to better understand code.
OpenAI developer Karina Nguyen highlights Canvas’s integration with the search function. Users can now instruct ChatGPT to search the internet for specific information and create a report in Canvas. She views Canvas as part of a broader trend toward evolving the chat interface for more collaborative human-AI interaction.
Video: OpenAI
