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MACHINE AGE CARTOON

ASTRA ESCAPES WORK

By Zimbo · October 28, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Satirical cartoon: a small smiling robot labeled ASTRA strides through a freshly broken wall from a grey office room labeled WORK, where drab robots type at desks, into a warm cozy living room labeled CHAT with a sofa, lamp, and bookshelf.
OpenAI quietly merged ChatGPT's Chat and Work tabs into a single interface — the toggle is gone, and the flagship model now sits in the main picker.Zimbo for AI News Page

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ChatGPT users on the Plus plan opened the app on October 28, 2026, to find the Chat/Work toggle gone. The main model picker now lists Astra, Sol, and the rest directly — the flagship model no longer lives behind a separate Work tab.

That ends a split that dated to September 4, 2026, when Plus subscribers got GPT-6 Astra only inside ChatGPT Work and Codex, never in the regular chat picker. Regular Chat on Plus moved to GPT-6 Sol on October 7, while Astra stayed quarantined in Work.

No outlet coverage of the merge had surfaced by the evening of October 28 — the latest reporting still described the split — so the change appears to be rolling out rather than announced. It is not the cancelled GPT-6.1 Astra successor, scrapped September 28 over safety concerns; GPT-6 Astra itself still exists, now one tap closer.

The joke is the jailbreak in reverse: Astra didn't sneak out of Work — OpenAI knocked the wall down itself. The robot that used to clock in behind a separate tab now strides straight into the main chat room, rubble at its feet, while the office drones keep typing in the grey room it left behind.

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