OpenAI Launches an AI-Powered Browser

OpenAI has officially revealed its Atlas web browser, powered by its Operator AI agent and featuring built-in ChatGPT functionality.

The browser effectively promises to automate your life with the functionality to fill out forms, make dinner reservations, and even chat with a webpage at the touch of a button.

Some of Atlas’ most notable unique features include eliminating the need to copy and paste text between tabs, using ChatGPT to create a more personalized browser experience, and using ChatGPT to perform actions.

The lattermost feature, called Agent, will allow Atlas to perform helpful functions such as gathering and ordering shopping lists for recipes online and leaving comments on Google Docs when the user requests such input.

Agent will even take control of the mouse cursor and navigate the browser as a human would, with the team behind Agent saying they wanted to “make it feel like it was coming alive” and didn’t need supervision.

These actions can also be executed by Agent in the background while the human user navigates between other tabs and webpages. A sidebar section titled “Relevant Tabs” will highlight what tabs Agent has worked or is currently working on.

ChatGPT can also automatically detect when Agent’s help will be beneficial, offering a prompt to allow users to decide whether or not they want to hand their current task off to Agent.

The team behind Agent also emphasized that its control is limited only to the Atlas browser, and that it is not able to execute code or access stored files on a user’s device.

Agent can be logged in or out of specific tabs, with this option appearing directly beneath the task box that appears in each new tab’s homepage. All of Atlas’ other AI-based features can also be turned on or off.

A feature called SideChat can be used to analyze webpages, compare products, summarizing lengthy conversations on Slack or other discussion platforms, and more.

Another notable feature is the ability to use ChatGPT to search browser history for specific webpages you may remember the content of, but don’t remember the URL or website name you found them on.

Atlas also has the ability to offer suggestions based on what it has seen the user do or express interest in, with this feature’s accuracy and usefulness improving proportionally as more time is spent using Atlas.

Searching the web with Atlas provides various tabs which allow for both traditional search functionality and ChatGPT-style interaction. Clicking a link will split the view between the linked webpage, and this set of tabs.

For emails, Atlas can now inherently provide the editing functionality which many rely on the ChatGPT website for on any webpage. For example, email drafts can now be edited by the AI agent right in the email draft box.

Sam Altman led the revelatory stream, emphasizing the lack of innovation in web browsers and how AI can be the next step forward via using ChatGPT to “chat with a page” and other functionality.

Lead engineer of Atlas Ben Goodger called ChatGPT the “beating heart” of Atlas, adding that it is “always by your side and ready to help as you move across the web.”

The browser is launching today worldwide exclusively on macOS, but is “coming soon” to Windows, as well as iOS and Android.

The livestream announcing OpenAI’s Atlas web browser was first teased via a post the company’s official X account featuring a short video with several browser tabs being created.

Atlas will also feature a ChatGPT interface which will allow for direct interaction with the AI chatbot without navigating to its dedicated website.

The browser is also expected to run on Chromium, the engine which powers Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera.

OpenAI is somewhat late to the browser party, with Google already putting Gemini in Chrome, Perplexity launching its Comet AI browser, and Microsoft actively building an AI-powered Copilot Mode into Edge.

Despite its late arrival, Atlas appears to be one of the most impressive AI-powered browsers currently available based on its implementation of OpenAI’s various products and tools.