What Pulse Is and How It Works

OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Pulse, a proactive experience that prepares personalized, research-backed updates each morning for Pro subscribers. Instead of waiting for user prompts, Pulse runs background research overnight and surfaces concise, scannable cards that reflect a user’s recent chats, expressed interests, and any connected apps they choose to opt in to.

Daily Signals and Content

Pulse anchors its output to multiple user signals. These include recent conversations in ChatGPT, long-term interests the user has shared, thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback, and data from connected services like Gmail and Google Calendar when a user enables those integrations. Each morning the feature presents visual cards that act as briefs with deep links for quick follow-up, not an endless feed. Typical cards can be news roundups tailored to a user’s interests or context-conditioned suggestions such as travel reminders tied to calendar events.

Integrations, Privacy Controls, and Defaults

Connected apps are off by default and must be explicitly enabled. When a user opts in, Pulse can use context from Gmail and Google Calendar to craft useful cards, for example meeting prep or itinerary nudges. OpenAI describes Pulse as a user-level personalization layer and emphasizes that settings exist in-app to manage connected accounts, memory, and what data Pulse may use.

Availability and Rollout

Pulse is launching now for Pro subscribers on the ChatGPT mobile app as a dedicated tab. OpenAI says broader availability is coming soon, with ChatGPT Plus access targeted after further product and efficiency improvements. The company highlighted Pro-first access primarily because the feature increases compute costs.

Product Direction: Toward Proactive Assistants

OpenAI positions Pulse as the first step toward more agent-like, goal-oriented workflows where a model can track user goals and proactively surface updates without explicit prompts. This shifts ChatGPT from a request-driven chatbot toward a context-aware assistant that reasons about user state, calendar, and tasks inside the app.

Leadership and Market Context

Sam Altman called Pulse his ‘favorite feature’ to date and framed it as starting with Pro while hinting at broader personalization as users opt in and share preferences. Pulse enters a competitive ‘morning brief’ space but differentiates itself by tying briefs directly to your live chat context and connected data rather than generic headlines. How deeply Pulse evolves will depend on implementation details like APIs, enterprise controls, and data retention policies.

The Sam Altman Note

Today we are launching my favorite feature of ChatGPT so far, called Pulse. It is initially available to Pro subscribers.

Pulse works for you overnight, and keeps thinking about your interests, your connected data, your recent chats, and more. Every morning, you get a… — Sam Altman (@sama) September 25, 2025

What to Watch Next

Pulse is rolling out to a limited set of Pro mobile users now, with Plus and broader access planned later. The degree to which Pulse becomes a full agent that drafts messages, pre-stages tasks, or deeply integrates with third-party apps will be revealed as OpenAI expands access and publishes more details on controls and enterprise capabilities.