Three million people use OpenAI's Codex every week. Nearly half of them aren't writing code.
On Thursday, OpenAI released a major Codex update that pushes the tool well past its coding roots. Codex can now operate your Mac in the background, browse the web on its own, generate images, remember your preferences and handle long-running tasks while you do something else entirely.
Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI's head of Codex, said it plainly: "We're actually doing the sneaky thing where we're building the super app in the open and evolving it out of Codex."
Ryan Lopopolo, a Member of the Technical Staff at OpenAI, summed up the design philosophy: "Humans steer. Agents execute." You say what you need. Codex figures out how to do it.
Here's what the update adds:
- Computer use: Codex can control your Mac alongside you, clicking through apps and browsers while you focus on other work. Mac only for now and not yet available in the EU.
- Memory: It learns your habits and preferences over time so it gets better at anticipating what you actually want.
- Image generation: Built directly into the tool, no workarounds needed.
- Background tasks: You can hand off work, go do something else and check back later.
The growth backs up the super-app bet. Codex had roughly 2 million users a month ago. Now, it's at 3 million with 70% month-over-month growth, representing a fivefold increase over three months. Eighty percent of OpenAI's own staff use the tool, including plenty of people who never touch a codebase.
OpenAI is using Codex to build Codex, too. An internal team produced roughly a million lines of code in five months with zero lines written by hand, averaging 3.5 pull requests per engineer per day. Sottiaux described what using the updated tool feels like: "You stop feeling like there is a limit to what Codex can do."
Some Claude Code users have been flagging quality issues in recent weeks, reporting shallower reasoning and less reliable output on complex tasks. Anthropic acknowledged the problem. OpenAI didn't mention any of this in its announcement, but launching a major Codex expansion while your main competitor's developer tool is catching criticism isn't accidental.
Sottiaux says this release is still targeted at developers, with plans to open it up to a wider audience later. But when half your users are already doing work that has nothing to do with code, "later" might already be here.
Most companies build super apps quietly and reveal the plan once you're already locked in. OpenAI is doing it out loud, on the record. The question worth sitting with isn't whether Codex can handle your presentations and web research on top of code. It already can. It's whether you're comfortable with one AI company becoming the layer between you and everything you do on your computer. Three million people a week are answering yes without anyone asking.
