Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- ChatGPT now lets you chat with certain third-party apps.
- You can interact with an app directly in your conversation.
- The feature supports Booking.com, Coursera, Expedia, and a few others.
Submit a question or request to ChatGPT, and the AI will typically search its own database or turn to the web to find the answer. But what if you’d like to use a specific service to dig up more relevant information that you can act upon? Now, you can do just that, courtesy of OpenAI’s latest third-party app integration.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
Unveiled on Monday by OpenAI, the latest capability turns ChatGPT into its own app platform. By prefacing your request with the name of a supported third-party app, you can chat with it directly. ChatGPT may also suggest adding an external app to the conversation if the topic lends itself that way. The app can even spice things up with visuals you can interact with.
Also: Everything OpenAI announced at DevDay 2025: Agent Kit, Apps SDK, ChatGPT, and more
“The magic of this new generation of apps in ChatGPT is how they blend familiar interactive elements — like maps, playlists and presentations — with new ways of interacting through conversation,” OpenAI said in its Monday blog post. “You can start with an outline and ask Canva to transform it into a slide deck, or take a course with Coursera and ask ChatGPT to elaborate on something in the video as you watch.”
The app integration is available to all ChatGPT users outside the EU on the free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. You can access the apps through the ChatGPT website, the Windows and Mac apps, and the iOS and Android apps.
Also: You can use ChatGPT to build a personalized Spotify playlist now – here’s how
For now, the third-party integration works with Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify and Zillow. Later in the year, more apps are expected to hop on board, while support will arrive in the EU.
To try this out, fire up the ChatGPT website, Windows or Mac app, or one of the mobile apps. The first time you try to incorporate a supported app into the conversation, you’ll be asked for permission to connect. From there, you can conduct the conversation until you get all the information you need.
How does this all work in actuality? Let’s check it with the various supported apps.
Booking.com
With Booking.com, you can make reservations for everything from flights to hotel rooms. Start your prompt by typing booking.com. You should see the name appear in bold with a link underneath. Enter the rest of the prompt by typing a request for a specific hotel, airline flight, car rental, or cruise. Here, I typed the follow: “Booking.com find hotels in London near the West End for the week of November 10 to 21 2025.”
Want more stories about AI? Sign up for Innovation, our weekly newsletter.
Since this was my first time using Booking.com with ChatGPT, I was asked for permission to connect the two. I clicked Continue and then Connect to proceed. In response, Booking.com showed me three possible hotels with the names, prices, and links to reviews. I was also asked if I wanted to amend my request to focus on the lowest-priced hotels. Otherwise, I could click the link to one of the suggested hotels to book it through Booking.com.
Canva
Canva can help you create and modify images for websites, presentations, documents, brochures, ads, greeting cards, and other media. To try this out, I submitted the following prompt: “Canva create a greeting card for a wife’s birthday with an image of a man bursting out of a large white birthday cake.” In response, the app generated a few different cards with just the right image and a birthday greeting. I could then select a specific card and save it to my Canva account to modify it or add a personal message to it.
Coursera
With Coursera, you can sign up for online courses to further your career or just explore new topics. Here, I entered the following prompt: “Coursera find a course in time management for writers.” The first suggested course from Coursera didn’t meet my request, so I asked it to try again. This time, it came up with a more general course called Time Management for Personal & Professional Productivity. From there, I could click a link to Coursera’s website to enroll in the class.
Figma
Figma helps you design websites, apps, and other types of digital content. At ChatGPT, I submitted the prompt: “Figma help me design a website to serve as my writing portfolio.” After suggesting some details to consider, it asked me if I wanted to generate a flowchart in FigJam to visualize the site structure first or jump straight into a Figma wireframe layout for the home page. After I chose the latter option, Figma asked for some specifics, such as the name of the site, the color, a hero image, and more. I supplied the necessary information, which Figma should have used to design the home page layout.
But here I ran into a hiccup. To get started, I already needed a project file in Figma itself to share in ChatGPT. I tried doing this, but couldn’t get the process to work correctly. So this one was a bust.
Expedia
Another site for travel and hotel arrangements, Expedia is a popular one among travelers. Here, I submitted the following prompt at ChatGPT: “Expedia find one-way flights with American Airlines from JFK to San Francisco for November 15.” In response, Expedia showed me several possible flights, any of which I could click to book directly on the website. Otherwise, I could add more details to my request by specifying non-stop flights only or basic economy seats only. I could also ask that the list be sorted or filtered by certain criteria.
Spotify
With Spotify as a popular music streamer, I asked ChatGPT to use Spotify to give me a list of the top ten greatest jazz songs from the 20th century. I was told that the ability to create playlists and make advanced requests is available only with Spotify Premium. (I have a free Spotify account). But the app still provided several lists, any of which I could select to add them as playlists to listen to in Spotify.
Zillow
Finally, I tried using Zillow to dig up real estate listings. Here, I asked it to find two-bedroom condos for sale in New York City on the East Side near Central Park. In response, the app located a host of possible homes with price tags and locations shown on a map. Clicking a specific listing then took me to its page on Zillow where I could learn more about it.
Overall, ChatGPT’s app integration performed relatively well, though it dropped the ball with certain apps and requests. Some tasks require an actual account with the third-party website, while others won’t work unless you start on the website itself. But as a first attempt, this seems like a promising way to narrow your results to work with a specific app.
