ChatGPT in July 2026: Work, Plugins, Copilot, Presence, and Health

Status as of November 5, 2026. For the current state of ChatGPT, including GPT-6 in Chat mode, usage sharing between ChatGPT Work and Codex, plan details, the retirement of GPTs, and DevDay announcements, see Lesson 11.

Beyond the models themselves, July 2026 transformed ChatGPT. This lesson reviews the month’s announcements in chronological order, focusing on those relevant to professional use. For each item, we stick strictly to what official sources document: who has access, where, and under what conditions. Make this your standard approach for staying up to date.

ChatGPT Work and the Plugin Directory (July 9)

On the day GPT-5.6 launched, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Work, an agent designed for long, complex tasks. It can search for and analyze information, work with your connected apps and files, and produce finished deliverables: documents, spreadsheets, presentations, reports, and Sites. You track its progress, answer its questions, shift direction, and approve key actions. Scheduled tasks let you restart a job once, at regular intervals, on a trigger, or to monitor for changes. At launch, Work was available on web and mobile for paid plans only, excluding Free and Go.

That same day, the Plugin Directory replaced the old App Directory, leaving existing connections intact. A plugin groups skills, apps, and app templates for a specific workflow. A new desktop app for macOS and Windows also unified Chat, Work, and Codex; with your permission, Work can access your local files and desktop apps there. Finally, OpenAI opened Sites to public beta, stopped creating new group conversations, and announced the sunset of its Atlas browser, which shut down on August 9.

GPT-5.6 in Microsoft 365 Copilot (July 9)

OpenAI announced the same day that GPT-5.6 would become the preferred model for Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Copilot Chat, and Cowork. Microsoft serves these models directly and also accesses them via the OpenAI API. For your teams, the change happens on Microsoft’s side: nothing to install or configure.

For training leaders, this announcement has practical implications. When ChatGPT and Copilot rely on the same generation of models, prompt-writing skills developed on one transfer more effectively to the other. This makes a strong case for consolidating part of your learning paths, while keeping tool-specific sessions for their unique features.

OpenAI Presence (July 22)

OpenAI Presence targets enterprises that want to deploy agents in production, via voice or text: answering questions, solving problems, using internal systems, performing approved actions, and handing off to a human when needed. Each deployment starts with a specific task, such as handling a billing issue. The agent receives only the knowledge and access required for that task, and the company sets its rules: what it can do, when it must request approval, and when a human takes over.

After go-live, real conversations and escalations reveal gaps, and Codex suggests fixes that teams test and approve. This is not a self-service product: OpenAI supports every client through deployment, sometimes with integrators. OpenAI states it uses Presence for its own English-language phone support, where the agent reportedly resolves 75% of incoming requests without human intervention; treat this as a vendor-provided figure.

Health in ChatGPT (July 23)

On July 23, OpenAI began rolling out Health to logged-in users aged 18 and older in the United States, on web and iOS, across Free, Go, Plus, and Pro plans. You can connect Apple Health and certain medical records, view a dashboard of your data, and let ChatGPT use this information in conversations with your permission. OpenAI specifies that connected medical records and Apple Health data, along with conversations that use them, are not used to train its models or target ads. At launch, Health is not available in France.

OpenAI also states that Health is designed to support care, not replace it, and is not for diagnosis or treatment. If you address these use cases in a professional context—HR, prevention, or training—the reflex to teach remains unchanged: AI helps you understand a document, prepare for a consultation, or formulate questions; medical decisions belong to healthcare professionals.

How to Track These Changes

Five major announcements in two weeks: the pace has clearly accelerated. The right approach isn’t to multiply sources, but to choose the right ones. The ChatGPT release notes in the OpenAI Help Center and the “What’s new” page in the ChatGPT documentation provide dates, plans, and regions covered. The API changelog covers the developer side.

Be wary of articles that “fill in” announcements with details the vendor hasn’t published. This is the top source of errors on these topics: a made-up number to flesh out an article gets cited from summary to summary until it passes as fact. When a detail doesn’t appear in the official source, the correct conclusion isn’t “this article knows more,” but “this detail isn’t confirmed.”

Your Turn

Verify an announcement at the source. Pick one announcement from this lesson and find it in the ChatGPT release notes. Note the date, plans, and countries involved, and distinguish what’s available immediately versus what’s only announced. Then find a news article on the same topic and identify what it adds or distorts.

Official sources: ChatGPT release notes (OpenAI Help Center) · GPT-5.6 in Microsoft 365 Copilot · Introducing OpenAI Presence · Launching Health in ChatGPT (OpenAI, July 2026) · What’s new (ChatGPT documentation)

Key Takeaways

• July 9: ChatGPT Work, the Plugin Directory, and the new desktop app
• GPT-5.6 becomes the preferred model for Microsoft 365 Copilot (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Copilot Chat, Cowork)
• Presence (July 22): enterprise agents deployed with OpenAI support
• Health (July 23): US-only at launch; AI helps you understand, professionals decide
• Follow official release notes rather than secondhand summaries