A dot is the always-on agent OpenAI added to ChatGPT. It keeps working while your laptop is closed, and sooner or later the work runs through email. By default that means your inbox. Here is when that is fine, and how to give your dot an address of its own when it is not.
OpenAI describes a dot as an always-on agent that keeps work moving across your tools. It runs on GPT-6 Astra, lives in the cloud and has its own computer and browser, so it carries on when your devices are off. You message it in ChatGPT, call it, or reach it in Slack and Teams, with texting listed as coming soon.
Dots are rolling out to ChatGPT Pro outside the EEA, the UK and Switzerland, and to Business Premium. If you have one, the question below arrives within a week.
The week a dot needs an address
Take the example from OpenAI's own docs: you ask your dot to keep a team offsite on track. It reads the plan and the venue emails, lists the decisions and deadlines, and drafts replies for you to review. All of that happens inside your mailbox, through the Gmail plugin, and it works well. You stay the sender, and the dot is your assistant.
Then the job grows. The dot should ask three caterers for quotes, sign up for a booking tool, and chase the venue for a floor plan. Now every message it sends goes out as you. The caterers reply to your inbox, the booking tool's confirmation code lands between your bank statements, and nobody can tell afterwards which messages you wrote and which the dot did.
When a dot works for you, your inbox is fine. When it works as someone, it needs a name of its own.
What a dot does with email today
OpenAI's docs list ChatGPT, voice, Slack and Teams as the ways to reach a dot. Email is not on that list. For mail, the docs point you to a plugin such as Gmail, which gives the dot your connected account with its existing permissions.
There are guard rails. Before an action affects your accounts or shares information, a review step decides whether the dot can go ahead, needs your approval, or must hand the step to you. You can also tell it to show you drafts before sending. Those rules make your inbox safer to lend. They do not give the dot an address of its own. We go through the general trade in is it safe to give AI access to your email.
Giving a dot its own email address
A dot has its own cloud browser, and OpenAI built a private sign-in flow for it. That is enough to give it a real mailbox today, with no plugin to install.
- Create the mailbox. Add your domain to Faivelo and create an address such as dot@ or events@. Faivelo writes the DNS records for you on most hosts. The 14-day trial needs no card, and Starter is $6 a month flat for every mailbox you make.
- Ask your dot to sign in. Tell it to sign in to webmail at mail.faivelo.com with that address. It sends you a private form; you type the mailbox password there, outside the chat, and the dot never sees it in the conversation.
- Let it stay signed in. The session lasts until you sign out or it expires. Save to Passwords is optional, and reusing a saved login asks you first.
- Give it the job. From now on the quotes, sign-ups and confirmation codes go to the dot's address. It reads and replies there, in its own name.
You keep the same view the dot has. Open the mailbox in webmail or add it to the Mail app on your phone, and every message it sent and received is there. Change the mailbox password and the dot is signed out. OpenAI notes that some websites block cloud browsers; if that ever happens, the docs suggest asking the dot to use a connected computer instead.
Which address to give it
Name the role, not the robot. events@ or quotes@ tells a caterer what they are talking to, and the address can outlive this dot. If several agents will send mail, put them on a subdomain like agents.yourcompany.com so their sending history stays apart from your team's. We explain that choice in AI agent email on your own domain.
Dots are part of a wider shift: Google now gives its Gemini coworker agents their own Workspace address too, which we cover in why AI agents are getting their own email address. If you are building your own agent rather than using a dot, the same mailboxes are available over a REST API and MCP, compared side by side in AI agent inboxes compared.
Give your dot an address today
Add your domain, create one mailbox for your dot and let it sign in. Fourteen days free, no card, and you can read every message it sends.