OpenAI launches an AI-powered browser: ChatGPT Atlas

OpenAI announced Tuesday the launch of its AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, a major step in the company’s quest to unseat Google as the main way people find information online.

The company says Atlas will first roll out on macOS, with support for Windows, iOS, and Android coming soon. OpenAI says the product will be available to all free users at launch.

Browsers have quickly become the AI industry’s next battleground. While Google Chrome has long dominated the space, there’s a sense that AI chatbots and agents are fundamentally changing how people get work done online. A handful of startups have tried to capture this by launching AI-powered browsers of their own, such as Perplexity’s Comet and The Browser Company’s Dia. Google and Microsoft have also tried to update Chrome and Edge, respectively, with AI-powered features to make their legacy products stand out.

OpenAI’s Engineering Lead for Atlas, Ben Goodger, said in a livestream Tuesday that ChatGPT is core to the company’s first browser. Users in ChatGPT Atlas can chat with their search results, much like in Perplexity or in Google’s AI Mode.

The killer feature for other AI-powered browsers has been the built-in chatbot that sits in a side panel and automatically has context for whatever’s on your screen. It may sound minor, but many users spend all day copying and pasting text or dragging files and links into ChatGPT, just to provide context. The sidecar feature removes that friction and makes for a smoother user experience.

OpenAI’s Product Lead, Adam Fry, said during the livestream that ChatGPT Atlas will have the sidecar feature, too. Further, ChatGPT Atlas has “browser history,” meaning that ChatGPT can now log the websites you visit and what you do on them, and use that information to make its answers more personalized.

AI-powered browsers also commonly feature an AI agent that aims to automate web-based tasks on behalf of users. In TechCrunch’s testing, we’ve found the early versions of web-browsing AI agents leave something to be desired. While Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s ChatGPT agent work well for simple tasks, they struggle to reliably automate the more cumbersome problems users might want to offload to an AI system.

Source: OpenAI launches an AI-powered browser: ChatGPT Atlas | TechCrunch

I think I may use this browser once or twice to see what it is like, but won't regularly use it.

The one AI browser mentioned in the article, Comet, the only way you can use it is by giving them 200 bucks. Yeah how about no lol.

I'll pass on it as well, if I want to use AI to help me browse the internet it already exists in both Firefox and Brave so I would just use that, but I'd rather do the searching myself without the help of AI.

I feel some people may avoid using an Ai browser because of privacy concerns.

It can feelweird for Ai to browse the web for you, and possibly go on sites, content, and services which maybe banned at school and work because the AI thought you were looking for sexual and violent content which you are not looking for while at work or school.

To be honest, this one will definitely shake Google a little . Imagine having ChatGPT inside your browser, it means no need to search plenty links again. I like that kind of idea, but I hope it won't drain the system resources like crazy.