Scheduled Tasks

This morning I received an email from ChatGPT (OpenAI) letting me know about a new feature. It's really more of a consolidation of something they've had in testing for a while, but now it has its own dedicated place in the app and browser. It's called Scheduled. I just checked and you have to be in the Plus or Pro tier, the free and Go tiers do not have this, yet, they often roll out new features to the paid tiers first and later offer it to the free and Go tiers.

When you click on it, you'll see something like this on your computer, using a tablet or phone it will look slightly different but work the same.

I know parts of this have been available before because I've actually used them. Back then, though, there wasn't a central place to manage everything. You had to tell ChatGPT what you wanted it to do in a prompt and hope it supported that type of task. Sometimes it worked great, sometimes it would tell me it could do something, then never actually do it, and other times it would simply say it wasn't capable. Looking back, I suspect that was the test bed for what they've officially rolled out today.

When I opened the Scheduled tab on both my browser and phone app, I was greeted with several ready-made options. One that immediately caught my eye was price tracking. It can watch prices at major online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Sam's Club, Chewy, and others. You simply choose the categories you're interested in, things like groceries, pet supplies, electronics, health products, tools, and more, then decide what qualifies as a deal. You can have it notify you when an item reaches its lowest price in the past 90 days, drops by a certain percentage, or meets other criteria.

Of course, you're not limited to the built-in options. You can create your own scheduled tasks from scratch. You can choose to be notified through the ChatGPT app or by email, depending on what works best for you.

I'm genuinely excited to see how this works in the real world. If it performs the way I think it will, this could turn into a surprisingly capable personal assistant that quietly handles a lot of those repetitive things we all end up checking over and over.

Here are just a few of the things you can use Scheduled for:

• Monitor prices on products you're planning to buy.

• Watch for sales at your favorite stores.

• Get notified when an item reaches its lowest price in the last 90 days.

• Receive daily, weekly, or monthly news summaries on topics you choose.

• Keep an eye on stock prices or cryptocurrency movements.

• Monitor severe weather or forecast changes.

• Track sports scores, standings, or your favorite team's schedule.

• Watch for travel deals on flights or hotels.

• Follow product launches or restocks.

• Receive reminders for birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, or medications.

• Get reminders for recurring chores like changing air filters, watering plants, or taking out the trash.

• Have it check for software updates or security news.

• Monitor job postings that match your interests.

• Watch for grants or funding opportunities for nonprofits.

• Follow legislation or government announcements on topics you care about.

• Check for updates on your favorite TV shows, movies, books, or authors.

• Send yourself a daily motivational quote, Bible verse, or writing prompt.

• Get a morning briefing with the weather, calendar, and important news.

• Receive a weekly summary of anything you're interested in, from AI news to gardening tips.

I have a feeling people are going to come up with uses that nobody at OpenAI even thought of. This feels like one of those features that's easy to overlook at first, but once you start thinking about it, you realize just how many little tasks you can hand off and stop worrying about.

If you want to read more about how I use AI, and why I use AI, click here:

https://www.wretha.com/search/label/AI

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!