You Can Now Use Upwork in ChatGPT to Find Freelancers

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Upwork is doubling down on its partnership with OpenAI by integrating its Work Marketplace directly into ChatGPT. Using natural language, businesses can describe their project needs, discover relevant talent, and draft job posts—all without leaving the AI platform. From there, they’re guided to Upwork, where Uma, the company’s own AI work agent, picks up to help scope projects, generate contracts, and kick off the work.

Introduced in 2021, the Upwork Work Marketplace is designed to expand the ways businesses and independent professionals connect and build long-term relationships. It spans more than 18 million professionals, 130 categories of work, and 10,000 skills, giving companies of all sizes on-demand access to talent ranging from software developers to marketers to financial consultants.

“Human expertise paired with AI is transforming work, and this integration brings the Upwork Marketplace directly into one of the tools millions of people use to get work started,” Peter Sanborn, Upwork’s chief business officer, says in a statement. “You can now quickly progress from an idea in ChatGPT to hiring the right expert on Upwork in just a few steps, turning conversations into real work outcomes.”

To put this into action, users must first connect their ChatGPT instance with Upwork’s app. Then, in a chat, they @-mention Upwork along with their request—“@Upwork I need an expert to lead an AI integration for my business” or “@Upwork Find a developer to build an AI customer support assistant that can answer questions, route tickets, and reduce response times.” From here, ChatGPT will display the matching talent pulled from Upwork’s network. Or, if the request involves creating a job, it will generate a draft of the requested structured job post.

Once verified and ready for outreach or publishing, the action moves away from ChatGPT to the Upwork app, where all the fine details of hiring can be handled.

“For many people, ChatGPT is where you can explore ideas, solve problems, and move work forward,” Chaya Nayak, OpenAI’s head of jobs and certification product, remarks. “We’re excited to partner with Upwork and make it easier for anyone to build a business—connecting them with the talent they need, on the platforms they use every day.”

Traditionally, if businesses wanted to hire a freelancer, they had to go to Upwork with a fairly well-formed idea, knowing which type of professional they wanted to find—a developer? designer? copywriter? social media consultant? The intent preceded the search. However, with this ChatGPT integration, it all happens in the same conversation where the need first arises. Someone brainstorming a product launch, marketing campaign, or event in ChatGPT won’t need to context switch anymore. They can prompt AI to help shape that project brief and find matching freelancers—all in the same thread.

There’s an irony here worth noting: At a time when workers fear AI will replace them, Upwork is using ChatGPT to help businesses find humans to do their work. The move suggests Upwork isn’t trying to compete with AI—rather, it sees human talent as something AI can help find and deploy more efficiently.

As mentioned above, this isn’t Upwork’s first tie-up with OpenAI. Last December, the two companies announced they would offer AI training, certifications, and upskilling to independent professionals worldwide on the Upwork platform.

Today’s announcement continues the trend of third-party apps integrating natively into ChatGPT. Besides Upwork, Adobe, HubSpot, Spotify, DoorDash, Uber, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Target, Zillow, GitHub, Dropbox, Box, and Wix are among the apps that see chat as the new user interface.

Featured Image: Credit: Upwork