OpenAI's 12 days of shipping new products and features is still underway. With some big announcements like a ChatGPT Pro subscription, full o1 model, and the general release of Sora out of the way, the 4th day brings some small updates in tow.
Canvas is now available to all free ChatGPT users and it's been improved even further. OpenAI released Canvas in beta back in October to everyone except free users.
Sakshi Garg
However, the company did say at the time that they eventually wanted to make the feature available for free users as well. That day is here now that Canvas is out of beta.
Canvas is now natively built into GPT-4o, which means it no longer needs to be selected separately from the model picker drop-down menu. Instead, there's a new button in the interface from where you can select 'Canvas' when you want to.
ChatGPT can also automatically kick Canvas into action when it determines that it's required. Alternatively, you can include words like 'Collaborate' in your prompt to start a Canvas.
The interface of Canvas is essentially the same; the chat opens on the left and the Canvas, with text or code, opens on the right. The interface makes it easier to collaborate with ChatGPT on coding or writing projects. The existing features of Canvas, like the specific menus for writing and coding, remain the same as well.
There's also a new way to open Canvas in ChatGPT now. When you paste large blocks of text or code into the text box, an 'Open in Canvas' button will appear in the textbox.
With this new copy & paste experience, clicking on the button will load the text into the Canvas window. You can also make changes to the text like making it Bold or Italic from the Canvas before even sending the prompt to ChatGPT. Until you send the request, ChatGPT is unable to see any data.
For coders, ChatGPT Canvas now also has the ability to run Python code directly, bringing it close in abilities to Claude's Artifacts. So, now you can run the code directly in ChatGPT and if you encounter any console errors, ChatGPT can help you debug them.
Lastly, Canvas is now also available with custom GPTs. While creating a new GPT, the option to use a Canvas is automatically selected. Users can also edit their existing GPTs to add the capability to it.
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