OpenAI is now integrating the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard developed by its competitor, Anthropic, to enhance connectivity between AI assistants and data sources.
In a post on X on Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed that the company will support MCP across its products, including the ChatGPT desktop app. MCP is an open-source standard designed to help AI models generate more relevant responses by leveraging data from various systems.
“We are very excited to bring MCP to our products because so many people love it,” Altman said. “MCP is now available in the Agents SDK, and soon it will also be supported in the ChatGPT desktop app and Responses API.”
With MCP, AI models can access data from various sources, such as business software, content repositories, and application development environments, to complete tasks more efficiently. This standard allows developers to create two-way connections between data sources and AI-powered applications, including chatbots and automation tools.
Through MCP, developers can build “MCP servers” that store data and “MCP clients” that connect applications to these servers as needed. Since becoming an open standard, MCP has been adopted by various companies, including Block, Apollo, Replit, Codeium, and Sourcegraph.
Anthropic welcomed OpenAI’s decision to adopt MCP. “Excited to see MCP continue to grow and now be supported by OpenAI – welcome!” said Mike Krieger, Chief Product Officer at Anthropic, in a post on X. “MCP has become a widely used standard with thousands of integrations. AI models are most useful when they can connect to the data and software users already rely on.”
OpenAI plans to share more details about its strategy for implementing MCP in the coming months.