OpenAI Presence connects AI agents to enterprise data with built-in guardrails

OpenAI has introduced Presence, a product designed to help companies deploy AI agents that handle customer support and internal service requests across voice and chat.

(Source: OpenAI)

The company describes Presence as a deployment platform rather than a standalone model.

“Presence brings together the components teams need to run agents in production: policies and standard operating procedures, guardrails, approved actions, simulations, evaluation tools, and a Codex-powered improvement process,” OpenAI said.

“Together, these components help teams connect company systems, define how agents should behave, evaluate performance, enforce policies, and manage changes after launch,” the company added.

Before a Presence deployment reaches users, teams can test it against common requests, edge cases, and higher-risk scenarios. Simulations and graders evaluate whether the agent reaches the correct outcome, follows policy, uses tools appropriately, and escalates conversations when necessary.

“Guardrails can intervene when an interaction moves outside the company’s boundaries,” OpenAI noted.

After launch, OpenAI says the system continues to learn from production sessions and escalations. Codex, OpenAI’s coding agent, reviews those interactions and suggests improvements to the agent’s behavior. Staff members test and approve the proposed changes before they go live, allowing the agent to adapt as company policies or customer behavior evolve without requiring anyone to rewrite it from scratch.

OpenAI says Presence already handles its own English-language phone support line and claims it resolves 75% of inbound calls without human intervention.

Presence is rolling out through a limited general availability program for enterprise customers, supported by OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers and select partners. It is not available as a self-service product, so interested companies must work through their OpenAI account team.