From Fragmented Chaos to GPT Glue: Imagining a Future of AI Productivity*

TL;DR: The evolution of GPTs parallels the historical development of integrated office tools and browsers. Just as browsers advanced to support rich multimedia and office tools evolved to integrate with each other, GPTs like ChatGPT are poised to act as the glue that connects research, productivity, and creative workflows. These tools will eventually allow users to combine GPT-generated content, web research, tables, images, and more—automating knowledge work and synthesis, much like Evernote or NotebookLM. Leaders in productivity software, like Microsoft and Google, are likely to spearhead this transformation.

The evolution of human productivity tools has always been marked by convergence—the merging of once separate technologies into seamless, cohesive ecosystems. The journey from fragmented chaos to a unified productivity ecosystem has been long, and my experience battling against Microsoft and working on productivity tools gave me a unique perspective on just how crucial this evolution is.

GPTs are now becoming the glue that binds these disparate tools together, transforming how we work. Just as browsers evolved to display not just text but also images, animations, and video [1], and just as office applications began to integrate through macros, cross-scripting, and embeddable, interactive content [2], the emergence of GPTs are not just standalone tools where all the work occurs; they are becoming the connective tissue that links multiple productivity tools together, automating tasks, synthesizing information, and allowing for deeper integration.

Just as the early office tools transitioned from standalone word processors and spreadsheets to an interconnected suite of applications, GPTs are evolving to facilitate a similar kind of cohesion and interaction across the digital workspace. They are turning fragmented workflows into cohesive processes—eliminating the chaos of switching between isolated tools and providing a unified layer of automation and integration.

Consider the browser—a humble text-based navigator in the early 90s that transformed into a vibrant, multimedia-rich platform that supports text, video, interactive tools, games, and live data. A similar journey can be traced in the way we use productivity applications. Office suites that once stood in isolation—spreadsheets, word processors, databases—became interconnected, finally saving us from the days when 'cut and paste' meant either an actual pair of scissors or the kind of copy-paste that seemed to lose formatting to spite you. Macros, linked data, and embedded objects enabled deeper interaction and synthesis across tools. GPTs are now positioned to help make these connections even more seamless and automatic. By acting as the glue that brings together these previously fragmented tools, GPTs are poised to eliminate inefficiencies and enable a new level of integrated productivity.

A Vision for GPT Integration

Imagine another scenario: a company provides customer service summary statistics across multiple clients. Every month, they prepare a report that includes anonymized data, rich visuals, and a podcast. The workflow begins with data analysis done in a GPT—synthesizing statistics from spreadsheets, then converting that data into engaging graphics using Canva. The report includes visuals and tables generated in a spreadsheet, combined with images from Canva, seamlessly integrated through GPT automation. The next step is creating a podcast summary using NotebookLM, where key findings are articulated and recorded. The podcast is then edited in CapCut for a polished finish and distributed using Spotify for Podcasters. This entire process leverages a rich set of SaaS tools, orchestrated by GPTs to create a cohesive, professional monthly report with minimal manual effort.

ChatGPT Canva, the evolving tool for managing output from GPTs, represents the beginning of a revolution in how we use AI [3]. Imagine using AI-generated content as just one component in a broader ecosystem, seamlessly combining it with online research, visual elements, and even your own data. GPTs, like an AI-powered evolution of Evernote, could help organize our learnings, chronicle our research, and assemble information into a cohesive narrative by connecting multiple tools into a unified experience. Tools like Google’s NotebookLM are already moving toward these capabilities—and this trend will only accelerate. [4]

One possibility for future GPTs is to allow users to synthesize information in a single, intuitive space: pulling content from multiple sources—including tables, graphs, and images—and weaving it into rich narratives. Instead of relying on multiple platforms and manually copy-pasting pieces of content together, GPTs can act as the orchestrator—turning fragmented chaos into unified automation, managing and combining different sources, insights, interactive visuals, and live data, much like creating multimedia research papers, but in real-time and through conversation.

Imagine this scenario: a small business owner is researching customer demographics and needs to prepare a marketing plan. They use ChatGPT as a hub to generate a list of key demographic insights based on their target audience. With a click, they import web data directly into the chat: visuals, charts, and customer survey summaries, with each piece of data coming live from its original source. Instead of ChatGPT doing all the work in isolation, it facilitates the integration of information from various tools, seamlessly arranging everything into a compelling draft presentation.

Next, the business owner wants to automate routine tasks, like scraping new market data every week and creating updated customer insights. Here’s where no-code scripting comes in—using a simple set of prompts or GPT-powered automations, the business owner sets up a workflow to refresh their data and email an updated version to their team. GPTs serve as the bridge that connects the different tools, no technical expertise needed—just an intuitive, end-user solution for building powerful workflows.

Opportunities for Productivity Leaders

In this future, companies that already have experience in productivity and language tools—such as Microsoft and Google—may have the edge. Microsoft’s integration of GPTs into tools like Word and Excel, or Google’s advances with AI in Workspace, could lead to a new class of productivity tools. [5] These would not just enhance individual work but amplify the power of collaboration by using AI to automate, cross-reference, and integrate information seamlessly across multiple platforms.

The world of standalone, isolated productivity tools is fading. What is rising in its place is something closer to a living, breathing assistant—one that doesn’t just wait for commands but anticipates needs, provides context, integrates seamlessly, and connects the dots across the vast landscape of information.

The evolution of GPTs marks the beginning of this new age—one where we don’t just talk to our tools, but use them as connectors and catalysts, unlocking new levels of productivity and creativity.

About the Author

Frederick Felman is a leader in marketing with experience at Zone Labs, MarkMonitor, Recurly, and Meta. He is now a Partner and startup advisor at Sage Partners, where he advises clients on product, product-led growth, go-to-market strategies, and provides executive coaching to founders and executives. Fred began his career at what is now Accenture. Still, his journey in mainstream tech started at Borland International, where he competed directly with Microsoft during the productivity software wars, gaining firsthand experience with the challenges of integrating productivity tools. He later worked on Borland Office before it was sold to WordPerfect/Novell, and witnessed the evolution of browsers and office ecosystems, as many of his colleagues moved to Netscape and Microsoft. This unique background shapes his vision for the future potential of GPTs to transform productivity tools from fragmented chaos into cohesive, interconnected systems.

Footnotes

[1] "The History of Web Browsers: Evolution from Text to Multimedia" - https://www.computerhistory.org/browsers-evolution

[2] "Office Software Evolution: From Standalone to Integrated Suites" - https://www.techradar.com/office-tools-history

[3] "ChatGPT Canva: Redefining AI-Powered Productivity" - https://www.openai.com/blog/chatgpt-canva

[4] "Google NotebookLM: Reinventing Research Tools" - https://www.blog.google/products/notebooklm-evolution/

[5] "Microsoft and Google Lead the AI Productivity Revolution" - https://www.theverge.com/ai-tools-microsoft-google

* I wrote this article with the help of ChatGPT. Here are the prompts used to write this article:

1. I'm hoping to write an article about the evolution of GPTs and I'd like some help. Here's the thesis: browsers and HTML evolved to allow us to represent and display text, images, animations and video from it's humble beginnings as text only. Integrated office applications with macros and cross-scripting to glue them together, with embeddable objects like video, graphs, tables and others that are live, from standalone word processors, spreadsheets, presentation tools and databases. ChatGPT Canva is the beginning of a revolution in end-user AI tools. I envision that GPTs will evolve similarly. Using chatGPT, Claude and other GPTs I can see how they'd serves us better with seamless integration with other productivity and research tools. And that images from the web and elsewhere could enhance our experience with the tools and our understanding of the information presented. As evernote helped us organize our notes and research, and NotebookLM from google is evolving. I can see GPTs evolving in that direction, helping us organize, chronical and assemble our research, writings and learnings. I imagine being able to assemble chatGPT output with web research and sources, images, table summaries of data that I've created, discovered or synthesized using chatGPT and associated tools. And, it would be helpful to have a no-code scripting language, or sets of gpt prompts that help automate workflows and workloads. As such, I imagine leaders in productivity and language tools like Microsoft and Google may have the edge in this oncoming revolution. Would you please help me summarize this in a TL:DR and flesh it out in a 2 page article that's supported with footnotes about the technology evolution I've described and the need I've described? And, help me imagine a scenario that this idea could be applied to?
2. can you add some footnotes citing articles with weblinks about the browser and office tools evolution and chatGPT canva and notebooklm
3. this is written as though GPTs are where the work occurs as opposed to being a tool and glue that puts all these tools together and automates them, can you re-spin the article that way?
4. Start with the idea, after seeing Canva I began to see the future evolution of GPTs in the context of past technologies' evolution
5. is there a way to inject a little humor into it, for example the clumsiness and shortcomings of early cut and paste capabilities, vs richer integrations
6. add one more case study, consider the rich set of SaaS tool, and a company that provides customer service summarizing stats across companies, anonymizing them, and creating a monthly report with graphics from a spreadsheet images generated by canva, data analysis in a GPT and generating a podcast with notebookLM and editing it in capcut and distributing it with spotify for podcasters.
7. write a catchy title for the article
8. shorter
9. it's more about the clunky, or lack of integration between tools and absence of unifying automation
10. Use: From Fragmented Chaos to GPT Glue: Imagining a Future of AI Productivity
11. integrate the idea of the title into the article