• 2 min read
ChatGPT Work handled 447 PDFs — but skipped approval prompts
ZDNET found ChatGPT Work useful for cleaning up 447 PDF files, but a missing permission check made it hard to trust for high-stakes tasks.
Image: ZDNET
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Work saved ZDNET’s David Gewirtz time on a tedious file-cleanup job, but one issue stood out: it never asked for permission before renaming and moving files, even with Ask for Approval enabled.
Gewirtz tested the new tool on a copy of a PDF archive on his Mac, asking it to analyze, rename, and organize files based on content rather than file type. The test folder contained 447 PDF files, up from 308 files when he ran a similar experiment with Claude Cowork in January.
ChatGPT Work, which was released last week, is available in the browser for cloud tasks and in the ChatGPT desktop app for local desktop tasks. Gewirtz said he approached the test cautiously, given the risks of letting an agentic tool operate on desktop files.
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What ChatGPT Work did well
According to ZDNET, the tool quickly summarized the folder, including:
- the number of PDFs
- storage used
- total page counts
- main themes
- encrypted files
- duplicate files
That duplicate detection was one place where ChatGPT Work outperformed Claude Cowork, Gewirtz said. It also produced useful file renaming suggestions by deriving more descriptive names from document contents, then reorganized the archive into sensible categories.
The overall result, he wrote, was solid enough that it likely beat what a person could do manually in the same amount of time.
The approval problem and cost
The bigger concern was oversight. Gewirtz said ChatGPT Work moved and renamed hundreds of files without a single approval request, despite the setting that should have forced it to ask first.
By contrast, he said Claude Cowork typically pauses before making major file changes. For any high-stakes task where human review matters, Gewirtz’s verdict was blunt: use Claude Cowork for now.
The job took 1 hour, 13 minutes, and 6 seconds. Gewirtz called that both fast and slow: faster than doing it himself, but sluggish compared with other agentic tools he has used.
On pricing, the task consumed 11% of the monthly capacity on his $20-a-month Plus plan, dropping available usage from 96% to 85%. He estimated that works out to roughly 10 projects of similar size per month. If each saves about 90 minutes, that comes to around 15 hours saved for $20.
Aside from the permissions issue, Gewirtz said ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork delivered broadly similar quality. But until OpenAI fixes approvals, he said the safer choice is still Claude Cowork.
Computing Editor
Tomas lives in the terminal. He covers chips, laptops, and operating systems with a focus on performance and efficiency. He reads kernel changelogs the way other people read fiction, and he's always on the hunt for the perfect mechanical keyboard switch. If it processes data, Tomas has an opinion on it.
via ZDNET
