OpenAI Makes Codex Mobile, Challenging Anthropic

OpenAI recently announced a significant advancement for its coding tool, Codex, by making it accessible on mobile devices. Launched about a year ago, Codex is now integrated into the ChatGPT app, allowing developers to manage and monitor their projects remotely, directly from their mobile phones.

This new feature offers users the ability to view their Codex environments in real-time on all devices where the service is active. Announced on Thursday, this update is currently in beta and is available to all subscribers using iOS and Android devices.

OpenAI stated, "It's more than just the ability to remotely control a single task or send new tasks to your computer." Users can, from their phones, work on all their threads, review results, approve commands, switch models, or initiate new projects.

Last month, OpenAI had already expanded Codex's capabilities by allowing the tool to operate in the background in desktop environments, thus autonomously managing various tasks. Additionally, a Chrome extension was introduced to enable Codex to work in live browser sessions.

In February, Anthropic launched a similar feature called Remote Control, which allows users to remotely monitor Claude Code's work. This series of feature launches by OpenAI and Anthropic highlights the fierce competition between the two companies to determine which agentic coding tool will become the most popular. Over the past year, Anthropic's Claude Code has gained popularity among businesses and technology professionals, although both tools continue to be widely used.