OpenAI Presence

OpenAI has unveiled Presence, a new business tool meant to let AI handle customer support chats and phone calls, do approved tasks, and pass tricky cases to a human when needed. On paper, it sounds like the dream: fewer endless hold times, faster help, and bots that can actually fix billing problems instead of reading from a script. OpenAI even says its own phone support line now solves 75% of issues without a human. But in the court of public opinion, the launch instantly turned into a spicy trust exercise.

The loudest reaction was simple: please, for the love of sanity, do not make this another robot maze. One commenter said they just hope it isn’t a “ten minute barrier” before reaching a real person, which pretty much sums up the public trauma around automated support. Another roasted the company’s glossy wording, saying the post was so stuffed with marketing fluff they couldn’t even tell what the product actually does. Ouch.

Then came the mockery. The phrase “battle-tested product” got absolutely side-eyed, with commenters joking that nobody had battle-tested anything except the marketing team’s courage. Others were more generous, saying it’s impressive that OpenAI is building across so many layers at once and clearly experimenting hard. So the vibe is split: one camp sees a serious business tool, the other sees a very expensive way to trap people in chatbot purgatory. Either way, the comments made one thing clear: if this thing delays humans instead of helping them, the internet will notice fast.