AI companies are connecting their models to users' email, calendars and computers as they try to close what the industry calls the capability overhang.
The term describes the gap between what AI models can do and what most people use them for.
Many users still treat the most advanced models as a Google search substitute, asking for weather forecasts or sports results.
That leaves their more complex abilities largely untouched.
AI researchers have long used the phrase for abilities that models already have but that nobody has yet found or put to work.
Labs including OpenAI are now trying to narrow the gap between how their own staff use AI and how the average customer does.
One route is connectors, which link a chatbot to a user's inbox and calendar so it can act on real information.
Another is letting the AI operate a user's computer directly, clicking and typing to complete tasks on their behalf.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini all offer versions of these tools.
The aim is to raise engagement, turning casual users into people who hand AI real work.
The push also has a commercial logic.
Companies often present broader functionality as grounds for future price rises, as well as a way to drive wider adoption.
Deeper integration brings its own problems.
An assistant that reads email and controls a computer needs far more personal data than one that checks the weather.
That raises questions about trust, privacy and how comfortable people feel handing over that access.
