ChatGPT Becomes a Superapp: AI Agents and Italian SMEs

The statement that changes the rules: "Chat is dead"

In early June 2026, OpenAI circulated an unmistakable message internally. The phrase making the rounds among teams is blunt: "chat is dead". It is not a marketing provocation. It is the operating premise for a deep restructuring of the company's best-known product.

According to The Decoder, OpenAI is planning to turn ChatGPT into a full-fledged superapp. The new product will bundle coding tools, autonomous AI agents and partner applications like Canva and Booking.com. The question-and-answer paradigm is being replaced by an ecosystem of continuous automation.

This announcement doesn't come in isolation. It fits a broader trend in which the major tech players, from Google with Gemini to Microsoft with Copilot, are converging on agentic architectures. Still, OpenAI is the first to explicitly declare the chat model dead as the dominant paradigm.

From conversation to action: what changes in the architecture

An AI agent doesn't answer: it acts. The distinction is technical, but its consequences are very practical. A traditional chatbot waits for an input, produces a response and stops. An agent, by contrast, receives a goal and pursues it through a sequence of autonomous actions.

For example, an agent can open a document, extract data, compare it with an external database, generate a report and email it, all without human intervention along the way. It can also interact with third-party APIs, run code, navigate web interfaces and make micro-decisions as it goes.

According to the rumors, ChatGPT's new architecture includes exactly this capability. The integrated partner apps, including Canva for visual production and Booking.com for travel management, become nodes in an automation graph. As a result, users no longer have to manually orchestrate every step across different tools.

To dive deeper into the technical foundations of AI agents, MIT Technology Review offers an up-to-date overview of how these systems are evolving in the enterprise context.

Immediate impact on SMEs: three real-world scenarios

For Italian B2B and retail SMEs, the move to the agentic superapp opens up operational scenarios worth watching. This isn't futurism. Some of these capabilities are already available in an early form and will go mainstream by the end of 2026.

• Customer service automation: an agent can handle first-level requests, check the CRM, update tickets and reply by email or chat without supervision. The human team can then focus on complex cases.
• Coordinated content production: integration with Canva and editorial tools makes it possible to generate visual and written campaigns in a semi-automated way. At SHM Studio, we are already evaluating how these workflows fit into our clients' SEO strategy.
• Operations and reporting: agents connected to ERP systems and spreadsheets can pull KPIs, build dashboards and send regular briefings to managers. As a result, the time spent collecting data drops dramatically.

In all three cases, the assumption is that business processes are structured enough to be delegated. This is often the real bottleneck in Italian SMEs.

The work still in progress: risks and limits you shouldn't underestimate

It would be wrong to present this transition as frictionless. The agentic architecture brings new complexity that the chat model never had.

The first risk is oversight of actions. An agent acting autonomously can make mistakes with knock-on effects. For example, a wrong action in an invoicing system can cause damage that is hard to trace. That makes agent governance, meaning who can do what and within which limits, a business priority, not just a technical one.

The second risk is dependence on closed ecosystems. If ChatGPT becomes the central automation platform, SMEs risk significant lock-in. According to an analysis by Gartner, diversifying tech stacks remains a priority for companies that want to keep strategic flexibility.

Finally, there is the issue of output quality. Today's agents are powerful but not infallible. Even so, many companies tend to overestimate how reliable these systems are in the early stages of adoption. A controlled pilot phase is always advisable before scaling.

What no one is saying: the real change is organizational

The public debate focuses on the technology. Yet the deepest change the agentic superapp brings is organizational. The companies that adopt AI agents effectively won't be the ones with the best tools, but the ones with the clearest processes.

An agent can only automate what is defined. If a process lives in one person's head, it can't be automated. So real preparation for the agentic era starts with mapping and documenting your existing workflows.

Likewise, internal skills need to evolve. The goal isn't to teach everyone to program agents. It's to build the ability to design clear, verifiable goals, what the literature calls advanced prompt engineering or, more precisely, task decomposition.

Italian SMEs that have already started AI adoption journeys with SHM Studio are in a better position. They have already tackled the fundamental questions: which data is available, which processes are repeatable, and where human judgment is still needed.

What to do now: strategic guidance for SMEs

OpenAI's roadmap has no definitive public release date. Still, the signals suggest the first advanced agentic features will arrive by the end of 2026. So the time to prepare is now, not once the product is already on the market.

Here are some concrete actions SMEs can start right away:

• Audit of repetitive processes: identify the low-value tasks that take up the most time in your operations teams. These are the prime candidates for agentic automation.
• Tech stack review: check which of the tools you already use (CRM, ERP, e-commerce platforms) offer open APIs. Agents work best in connected ecosystems.
• Controlled experimentation: launch a pilot project on a non-critical process. This lets you gain experience without high operational risk.
• Internal training: help your teams understand the difference between rule-based automation and agentic automation. Realistic expectations reduce disappointment after adoption.

For B2B SMEs, integration with tools like LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads could benefit from agents able to optimize campaigns in a more granular and continuous way.

Outlook: 2027 as a year of consolidation

The shift from ChatGPT the chatbot to ChatGPT the superapp won't happen overnight. That gives SMEs a reasonable window to adapt. Still, those who start today will build a significant cumulative advantage over those who wait.

Projections for 2027-2028 suggest AI agents will become standard components of the business operating stack, much as CRMs did in the 2000s. According to Harvard Business Review, organizations that integrate AI into their core processes already show productivity gains of over 20% compared to competitors that don't.

At SHM Studio, we guide Italian SMEs along this path. From digital marketing strategy to AI adoption, from organic visibility to web development: every service is being rethought for an increasingly agentic ecosystem.

Want to talk about the specific opportunities for your company? Contact our team. Or explore the SHM Studio blog for ongoing insights on AI, automation and digital strategy.