Should we shut down our web tool now that ChatGPT can build the same thing?

Not because of the launch alone. First look at where users come from and what they do after using the tool. If they arrive from search and leave after one visit, the tool is exposed. If they come back, or the tool sends them on into something you sell, the tool has a job ChatGPT does not take.

Can we make our tool available inside ChatGPT instead?

That can be the right move, but then you are renting the channel from OpenAI. Find out what you get back in data and customer relationship when the user never reaches your site. Without that, you have moved the function and lost the visit.

How do we measure whether the tool is losing traffic to ChatGPT?

Track organic traffic to the tool page week by week from 7 October 2026 and compare it with traffic to the rest of the site. If the tool page falls more than the rest, that is a signal. Also track how many people go on from the tool to a purchase or an enquiry, because that number tells you what the visit was worth.

Does this also apply to internal tools only our employees use?

Less so. An internal tool has a fixed channel, the employees, and often data ChatGPT cannot reach. The question for an internal tool is whether it is still cheaper to maintain than letting employees use a general language model with access to the same data.

Venture

ChatGPT builds your tool inside the answer. The channel is what is left.

ChatGPT now answers with calculators, forms and buttons built on the spot. A product that is a single function has lost the reason people came to it. What remains is the channel, and the date you decide on.

By Espen Hareide3 min readOctober 9, 2026

An old desk calculator with a paper roll pushed to the edge of an oak desk, an open laptop with a blurred screen, a coffee cup and a notebook with a pen, and an empty office chair in front of a concrete wall.

What happened?

OpenAI began rolling out GPT-6 with Intelligent UI in ChatGPT on 7 October 2026, first to paying users and to free users the following day. ChatGPT now answers with buttons, diagrams, forms and calculators, such as a savings calculator where the user changes the amount without writing a new prompt.

Why is Intelligent UI read as design news?

Intelligent UI is read as design news because the launch shows off interfaces: clickable diagrams, fillable forms and maps with stops along the way. The discussion is about how the answers look.

That reading skips over who loses the visit. A small web tool, such as a loan calculator, a development-time estimate or a generator for one type of document, has lived on people searching for the function and landing on the page. When ChatGPT builds the same function inside the answer, where the user already is, the reason to click through disappears. The function was never what the product owned. The product owned the visit. What the same shift does to pricing is covered in Salesforce moved the interface out of the product.

What does Intelligent UI mean if distribution decides the product?

The claim behind our product development and venture pillar is that distribution and the nerve to stop decide a product, and that the idea does not. If the claim holds, a product that is a single function now has no defence. The function can be built for free inside the answer. The channel cannot be built inside the answer.

Alphalens, a Norwegian AI company formerly called Deckmatch, announced in September that its service closes in October. The founders wrote that the company could not solve distribution, and that several customers had started building their own tools with AI that were good enough for them. Alphalens raised USD 3.1 million in 2024.

One of the hardest things has been realising that more product development would not solve our distribution challenge.

Walid Fayez Mustapha, co-founder of Alphalens, as quoted in Norwegian by Shifter on 11 September 2026 and translated back here; not checked against his original English

What does Apps AS do differently?

The question we take from Intelligent UI is what a product owns that cannot be built inside an answer, and that question has to be answered before the product gets more development time. Two of Apps AS' own products show why the technology does not answer it. Goodnight AI produced hundreds of unique bedtime stories an hour without a person involved in the content. AppCloud halved delivery time on the projects delivered on the platform. Both products worked, and both have been shut down.

Adviseful.ai is the product where the question is sharpest now. Adviseful.ai takes an idea and returns an app concept with an estimate of development time and resources. ChatGPT can produce that kind of estimate inside an answer. What ChatGPT cannot produce is the place in the consultancy's own branded setup and the lead that goes straight into HubSpot or Salesforce. The value of Adviseful.ai is the integration with the customer's sales process, and the estimate is the way in.

Three questions for a product that is a single function

Where did your last hundred users come from? If they came from searching for the function, your channel is the same place ChatGPT now answers. If they came from your own network, the channel is untested, as Norwegian product market fit is often a false positive describes.

What does the product own that cannot be built inside an answer? Data the user has added over time, an integration with a system the customer already runs, or a fixed place in a workflow.

On what date do you make the decision? Without a date, development carries on out of habit, and more development does not solve distribution.

Why our own products are where Apps AS tests its own advice is covered in What building our own products teaches us.

Send us one product and the channel it lives on

If you run a product or a web tool that mainly does one thing, write down the function and where your last hundred users came from. Send those two lines to hello@apps.no. We will reply with what we think the product owns that ChatGPT cannot build inside an answer, or tell you we found nothing.

Sources

TechRepublic, OpenAI Rolls Out GPT-6 Intelligent UI With Interactive Charts, Forms, and More, 8 October 2026, read 9 October 2026. techrepublic.com
Quartz, OpenAI launches GPT-6 and Intelligent UI in ChatGPT, 8 October 2026, read 9 October 2026. qz.com
Shifter, AI-utviklingen innhentet norsk startup: Legger ned etter tre år (in Norwegian), 11 September 2026, read 9 October 2026. shifter.no
Apps AS, case pages for Goodnight AI, AppCloud and Adviseful.ai, read 9 October 2026. apps.no

About this article. Written by Espen Hareide, co-founder and partner at Apps. A take through the lens of the product development and venture pillar. The details of Intelligent UI come from TechRepublic and Quartz and have not been checked against OpenAI's own announcement. The Alphalens quote was published in Norwegian by Shifter, translated from English, and is rendered back into English here. The details of Goodnight AI, AppCloud and Adviseful.ai come from Apps AS' case pages, which do not say why Goodnight AI and AppCloud were shut down. The article uses no customer figures.

FAQ

Should we shut down our web tool now that ChatGPT can build the same thing?: Not because of the launch alone. First look at where users come from and what they do after using the tool. If they arrive from search and leave after one visit, the tool is exposed. If they come back, or the tool sends them on into something you sell, the tool has a job ChatGPT does not take.
Can we make our tool available inside ChatGPT instead?: That can be the right move, but then you are renting the channel from OpenAI. Find out what you get back in data and customer relationship when the user never reaches your site. Without that, you have moved the function and lost the visit.
How do we measure whether the tool is losing traffic to ChatGPT?: Track organic traffic to the tool page week by week from 7 October 2026 and compare it with traffic to the rest of the site. If the tool page falls more than the rest, that is a signal. Also track how many people go on from the tool to a purchase or an enquiry, because that number tells you what the visit was worth.
Does this also apply to internal tools only our employees use?: Less so. An internal tool has a fixed channel, the employees, and often data ChatGPT cannot reach. The question for an internal tool is whether it is still cheaper to maintain than letting employees use a general language model with access to the same data.