ChatGPT apps launched in October 2025, introducing a new way to interact with third-party services directly inside conversations. OpenAI rolled out integrations with popular platforms, promising to blend familiar interactive elements with conversational AI.
The feature is available across all ChatGPT account types, including free users, and developers can now build custom apps using the Apps SDK built on the Model Context Protocol.
While the concept sounds revolutionary, imagine booking travel, designing graphics, or managing emails without leaving your chat window, early testing reveals significant gaps between promise and performance.
These ChatGPT apps introduce new vulnerabilities, usability friction, and reliability issues that often make the native applications faster and more dependable.
- What Are ChatGPT Apps and How Do They Work?
- Privacy and Security Concerns With ChatGPT Apps
- The 5 ChatGPT Apps That Fall Short of Expectations
- 1. Spotify – Great Concept, Limited Execution
- 2. Canva – Design Tool Turned Frustration Generator
- 3. Booking.com – When Convenience Becomes Complexity
- 4. Gmail – One-Way Street With Limited Utility
- 5. Coursera – Marketing Engine Disguised as Learning Tool
- Frequently Asked Questions
- 1. Are ChatGPT apps only for paid users?
- 2. How are ChatGPT apps different from browser extensions or “ChatGPT wrapper” apps?
- 3. Can I control exactly what data a ChatGPT app can access?
- 4. What tasks are actually well-suited for ChatGPT apps?
What Are ChatGPT Apps and How Do They Work?
ChatGPT apps are third-party integrations that run natively inside ChatGPT conversations. Users can invoke them in two ways: by starting a message with an app name (like “Spotify, make a playlist for my party this Friday”) or through contextual suggestions when ChatGPT detects relevant intent during conversation.
For instance, mentioning home shopping might prompt ChatGPT to surface the Zillow app automatically.
These apps can read conversation context, access connected account data, and display interactive elements like maps, playlists, or design previews directly in the chat interface.
Each app requires explicit connection authorization the first time it’s used, establishing data-sharing permissions between ChatGPT, the user, and the third-party service. The system relies on the Model Context Protocol to enable apps to expose tools, process data, and return structured responses that ChatGPT can render.
Privacy and Security Concerns With ChatGPT Apps
Connecting ChatGPT apps creates additional attack surfaces and data exposure risks that users should carefully consider before authorizing access.
When integrating third-party applications, sensitive information flows between ChatGPT, the app’s servers, and OpenAI’s infrastructure, creating multiple points where data could be intercepted or breached.
ChatGPT already collects substantial data including account details, all prompt content, uploaded files, IP addresses, browser information, and approximate location.
Third-party app integrations compound these privacy implications by granting additional services access to conversation history, personal preferences, and potentially sensitive information shared during chats.
In 2023, Samsung experienced an internal data leak when engineers accidentally shared proprietary source code with ChatGPT while troubleshooting issues.
Security experts highlight several specific risks associated with third-party ChatGPT apps: data exposure during transmission between systems, vulnerabilities in plugin architectures that may not follow core platform security standards, and fragmented authentication processes that create unauthorized access opportunities.
If authentication credentials for connected services are compromised, attackers could potentially access ChatGPT interactions and extract sensitive information.
ChatGPT’s privacy policy explicitly states that conversations can be stored, reviewed by human staff for model training, and turned over to authorities if deemed incriminating, even when chat history is disabled, data remains on internal servers for 30 days.
These retention policies extend to information shared with connected apps, meaning users sacrifice additional privacy layers each time they authorize a new integration.
The 5 ChatGPT Apps That Fall Short of Expectations
1. Spotify – Great Concept, Limited Execution
The Spotify ChatGPT app shows promise for podcast discovery and broad playlist creation but struggles when users request specific criteria. Testing revealed the app successfully generated a “rainy day” playlist with moody songs that appeared directly in Spotify via clickable links.
ChatGPT could also analyze recent listening history to recommend new podcasts, though users still needed to manually search and follow each suggestion in Spotify.
The integration breaks down with nuanced requests. When asked to create a playlist of “lesser-known but critically acclaimed 1990s songs from UK artists,” the app failed after six attempts and ultimately suggested manual playlist creation or editing in Spotify to remove songs that didn’t meet the criteria.
This limitation reveals a fundamental weakness: ChatGPT apps work for simple, broad tasks but lack the precision required for detailed specifications that the native Spotify app handles effortlessly.
2. Canva – Design Tool Turned Frustration Generator
Canva’s ChatGPT integration promises to transform outlines into slide decks and generate custom designs through conversation, but real-world performance disappoints considerably.
In testing, attempts to replicate existing designs with different text resulted in ChatGPT repeatedly claiming success while providing broken links or unchanged original designs. After multiple failures, the AI admitted it couldn’t complete the task and redirected users to make changes manually in Canva.
Even straightforward requests produced flawed results. A simple prompt to design a vintage-looking jar label for plasticine yielded designs with nonsensical spelling errors like “Plasitthcciine,” a text-rendering problem supposedly resolved in earlier ChatGPT versions.
Interestingly, running identical prompts separately in ChatGPT and Canva’s native AI produced correctly spelled results, suggesting the integration somehow degrades both systems’ performance when working together.
The only viable use case appears to be generating basic templates that users can then extensively edit in Canva itself, raising the question of whether the integration provides meaningful value over using either platform independently.
Read more:
OpenAI Launches ChatGPT Go in the US; Ad Testing to Follow for Free Tier
3. Booking.com – When Convenience Becomes Complexity
The Booking.com ChatGPT app transforms a simple, efficient booking process into a confusing, time-consuming ordeal. The native Booking.com website allows users to find suitable holiday rentals within minutes using flexible date ranges, location filters, property type specifications, and budget parameters, all with smart AI-assisted filtering.
By contrast, using the ChatGPT apps integration for the same task produces significantly worse results: ChatGPT ignored previous instructions, suggested unsuitable properties, provided incorrect information about property sizes, and falsely claimed unavailability for dates that showed open on the website.
The app also refused to display property photos, forcing users to visit the Booking.com site anyway to view accommodations.
The conversation-based interface creates additional friction rather than reducing it, requiring users to repeatedly clarify requirements that standard web forms capture efficiently in a single step.
While ChatGPT can help brainstorm destination ideas based on desired vacation attributes, a task it performs well without app integration, the booking execution itself remains far superior on Booking.com’s native platform.
4. Gmail – One-Way Street With Limited Utility
The Gmail ChatGPT app offers read-only functionality that can search inboxes, access profile information, and read sent and received emails, but critically cannot move messages, send emails, or reliably handle attachments.
This one-directional access creates an unusual dynamic where ChatGPT can consume information but lacks the ability to act on it meaningfully within the email ecosystem.
The app can summarize emails and help draft responses that users must then copy and paste into Gmail manually.
However, Google’s own Gemini AI already provides similar email composition assistance natively within Gmail, where drafted text inserts directly without the copy-paste step. Testing confirmed the ChatGPT integration failed to read documents attached to emails when specifically requested.
Privacy implications deserve special consideration. Granting ChatGPT access to read an entire email inbox exposes potentially sensitive personal, financial, or professional information to both OpenAI’s systems and the data retention policies previously discussed.
Given the limited functionality and significant privacy trade-offs, most users would find better workflows by drafting in ChatGPT separately (without app connection) and manually transferring content to Gmail, thereby minimizing connected data exposure.
The app did prove somewhat useful for inbox organization advice, allowing users to reference specific emails, senders, and folders during conversation, though all recommended actions still required manual execution in Gmail itself.
5. Coursera – Marketing Engine Disguised as Learning Tool
The Coursera ChatGPT integration excels at one thing: efficiently funneling users toward Coursera’s paid course catalog. When users request information about topics like beginner Python training, the app immediately provides course links matching requirements, making enrollment temptingly frictionless.
This streamlined discovery benefits Coursera substantially by reducing the path from interest to purchase, potentially increasing conversions compared to competing educational platforms not featured in ChatGPT. However, advantages for end users remain questionable.
Searching Coursera’s website directly offers identical information with greater clarity and more comprehensive filtering options for comparing courses, pricing, instructor credentials, and user reviews.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Are ChatGPT apps only for paid users?
No. Many ChatGPT apps work for free users, but some features still depend on region, rollout, and the third-party service’s own subscription.
2. How are ChatGPT apps different from browser extensions or “ChatGPT wrapper” apps?
ChatGPT apps run inside the official ChatGPT interface using OpenAI’s Apps SDK, while extensions and wrapper apps are external tools that sit on top of, or around, the core service.
3. Can I control exactly what data a ChatGPT app can access?
Control is mostly at the app level. You can grant or revoke access, but you usually cannot choose very specific limits (like one folder or one project only).
4. What tasks are actually well-suited for ChatGPT apps?
They work best for light, low-stakes tasks, quick ideas, simple recommendations, and basic summaries, where convenience matters more than precision or deep control.
Read more:
Apple Is Reportedly Working on a Siri Chatbot Version