ChatGPT Computer Use: How to Control Your Mac with ChatGPT

From the video's captions, lightly corrected. [unclear] marks audio we could not make out.

1. 0:00

   Hey everybody, my name's Chris, and in this video I'm going to show you how to use ChatGPT to control your computer. In the last video we went through how to use ChatGPT to control your Chrome browser, and you might be wondering how this video is going to be any different from the other one. Well, first of all, if you watched the other video, thank you so much. Really glad that you enjoyed it and [unclear] watch another video.

2. 0:22

   The difference is ChatGPT for Chrome requires you to install an extension connected to your Chrome, and basically ChatGPT only has the latitude to operate within your Chrome. Which for many intents and purposes is actually fine. That's just enough. But what happens if you want to open Apple Notes? Or maybe open up Music and play a song that you like and get started with your vibe for the day? Those sorts of things are not always native on Chrome. In fact, I don't believe that there's a way to log into your Notes or your Apple Music in a really convenient way. Normally they're installed on your actual Mac itself.

3. 1:06

   This works for Windows as well. I'm just using a Mac for this example. So, that's what we're going to learn today. We're going to learn how to install that, where the plugin is, how to invoke it, and then what are some different things you can do with it. So, let's go ahead and get started.

4. 1:21

   All right, first thing you want to do here is move over to the plugins. As you will remember from our last video, this is how you install new capabilities into ChatGPT. Just like we installed Chrome, and Chrome guided us through the login flow to install our Chrome extension and get everything set up, we also have to do the same thing for Computer Use.

5. 1:47

   Computer Use is the official ChatGPT [unclear]. Its developer is OpenAI, so you have nothing to worry about here. This is as official as it comes. It is a plugin specifically allowing ChatGPT to control your computer.

6. 2:02

   If you don't see it in your featured, you'll go ahead and type up here "computer use", and you will see a little install button if you don't have it installed. For me, I have the little "Try now" three-dots button. That means I already have it installed. But if you haven't installed it, you'll see something kind of big and bright like this that says Install, and you go ahead and go through the flow.

7. 2:24

   Now, one thing to note: Computer Use, from a technical standpoint, does require a lot of permissions. It requires the ability to open up your applications, to read your applications, to control your mouse, control your keyboard, do all sorts of things. So if you're on a Mac like myself, when I went through the setup process it said all sorts of things like, "Are you really, really, really sure that you want to allow ChatGPT to do XYZ?" And I had to click a lot of allow, allow, allow, and then, "Are you sure you want to allow? Enter your password." Okay, yes, go ahead.

8. 2:57

   So, just a warning, you're going to get a lot of those pop-ups. I went through the pop-ups. It hasn't gone Terminator and tried to do all sorts of crazy things yet. So I'm a testament that it does not go evil on you. But yep, you'll have to give it those permissions.

9. 3:14

   And then, once you've given it the permissions, you can go ahead and do the "Try now", or you can invoke the plugin itself by just doing @ and whatever the plugin name is, which is called Computer. You do @Computer, and you will explicitly be telling it, "Use my computer for me."

10. 3:36

    A lot of times it's smart enough to naturally invoke. If I took away this explicit @Computer and I said, "Play a playlist to help me lock in," there's some ambiguity there. So it might say, "Well, let me go play the playlist on his Spotify on Google Chrome." But what I wanted to do is play the playlist on my Apple Music, which is not available in Google Chrome. So I'm going to go ahead and tell it specifically @Computer.

11. 4:08

    So, let's go ahead and see what it does here. I've got my Apple Music pulled up right here, and I've got my hands off of the steering wheel of the computer. No keyboard action, no mouse action here. This is all ChatGPT controlling my desktop and making the selection.

12. 4:30

    Let's go ahead and see what it's doing here. I love that ChatGPT likes to narrate itself. It's saying it's choosing the focus music. It's reading the skill. I'm sure in a second here it's going to play the focus music.

13. 4:48

    Hey, [music] right on time. See if you can hear this. [music] Okay, I'm not sure how good the [unclear] is there, and I don't want to get copyrighted here, but it did start playing. It started to play [unclear]. I guess it thought that that would help me lock in. Little peaceful vibes there.

14. 5:12

    So, of course, this is just scratching the surface. [unclear] But maybe you've gone ahead and created this whole routine where you're getting it to open up a fresh notepad for you, and it's opening up your favorite music, and it's clearing your calendar for you, and you put that all together in a skill. Then Computer Use starts to look really awesome.

15. 5:37

    Or, if there are things that maybe are only available on your computer, maybe you've got a notepad, maybe you've got a development environment that requires you to visually see the development that's happening as well as control your coding interface, you can have it go ahead and do things like that.

16. 5:56

    Or, because it can operate on your actual desktop itself, you can have it do things like take files from one place and upload them into your Google Chrome portal. Maybe you've got resumes that you're submitting for job searches, things like that.

17. 6:14

    Really, I would advise you to just give ChatGPT as much latitude and let it prove itself to you, because it's been really useful for me in this Computer Use skill, and hopefully it's useful for you, too.

18. 6:27

    So, that's it for today. I wanted to keep it kind of brief. If you have any questions, if there's anything you want to see more of or you're getting stuck on, please go ahead and drop them in the comments below. I'll respond to them. If you like this video, drop a like and subscribe if it was valuable for you. Thank you so much for joining me.